Tamiya has long offered a wide range of acrylic paints and acrylic thinners. Recently I experimented with Tamiya’s Lacquer Thinner, item # 87077. As a rule, I tend to use the paint thinner produced by the same company that produced the paint being used.

I found that the Tamiya lacquer thinner worked very well, indeed, although its use is different than the acrylic thinner I’m used to using. Do not let the fact that it is a Lacquer thinner dissuade you from using it with your standard Tamiya acrylics. It works just fine.

The lacquer thinner is noticeably “stronger” than the acrylic thinner, both in how it interacts with Tamiya acrylics and how it smells. And it should be said here that if you can smell the paint you are airbrushing then you should wear a mask. Also, users are strongly advised not to have an open flame nearby as lacquer is combustible.

To those who model Soviet era and modern Russian aircraft there has been a welcome proliferation of weapons which have emerged on the market, so we have something to hang on aircraft models other than rocket launchers and dumb bombs. Unlike the west, the Soviet and now Russian military is not known for the use of smart ordnance; rare were the pictures of them fitted. But a wide range of smart weapons exist in the Russian inventory for specialized missions and the pictures coming from Syria show smart weapons being used.

A new manufacturer from Russia has come on the scene to offer perhaps the widest range of munitions than we have seen so far on the market – Advanced Modeling (AM). These are multi-media kits cleanly cast in gray, durable resin; the detail is superb.

This is a wonderful kit that I enjoyed building. The model has nice detail, great fit of the parts, and makes a fantastic little model of a unique military vehicle. It’s very small, with some finely cast prices, so experience with small parts will be helpful. Thunder Model is a new Chinese model maker and this is their first release. The kit was released in September 2016, and will be followed by a loader version of the same tractor.

During World War II the Case tractor company produced more than 1.3 million howitzer shells, 200 sets of bomber aircraft wings, and 20,000 specialized war tractors and engines. From 1941 to 1945 the factory built over 15,000 special military tractors in roughly 40 variants, and over 4,000 tractor engines for the U.S. Army and the Allies were produced. The VA series of tractors was introduced in 1942 and continued in civilian production through 1956.