Authored by Chris Goss, this is the tenth volume in the Historic Military Aircraft Series, and the fourth devoted to British combat aircraft of the 1970’s and 80’s, the twenty years which signified the final twenty of The Cold War. Goss treats the four major British recon aircraft separately with their own chapters: the Canberra, Gannet, Nimrod and Shackleton. The book is super illustrated with color photographs of each type and concise tables listing the variants produced: the Gannet with seven, the Nimrod with six, the Shackleton with five, and the Canberra with a whopping fourteen. If there’s a drawback to Goss’s work, it’s that the colors in some of the book’s photographs are slightly muted, typical of the film used in that time. but they’re still accurately portrayed and plenty detailed for the scale modeler to use.
This is the second Arma Hobby kit that I have been fortunate to review, and once again, the company has delivered a wonderful representation of a 1/72 scale aircraft, this time, the P-39Q Airacobra. Arma Hobby produces some of the finest detailed kits that I have seen in some 50 years of modeling. I would highly recommend this kit to anyone who wants to add a model of the final variant of the Airacobra to their collection.
For anyone painting United States Army Helicopters from the Vietnam-era onward, one of the latest releases from Ammo by Mig is an Air Set providing three different greens and flat black for the rotor blades. The bottles include a mixing ball (as identified by the yellow cap) which greatly aids in agitating the paint prior to use. I find the paints of a consistency that allows for brush painting straight from the bottle, and I add a small amount of thinner when airbrushing. This is a great set that I highly recommend if you have any US Army helicopters in your stash.
This is an amazingly detailed book authored by a Polish Ph.D. in Law, living in Japan, writing about Japanese advances in the eastern Indian Ocean. As if that isn’t intriguing enough, author Michał A. Piegzik covers a little known (at least to most Americans) subject in a much larger backdrop of Allied defeats in the early Pacific War, focusing on ABDA (American, British, Dutch, Australian) forces as they reeled from Japanese attacks in Thailand, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dutch East Indies, the Philippines, Java, and Burma.
Brengun continues to expand its line of accessories this time with a photoetch set for the Revell 1/48 Focke-Wulf Ta-154
The fret includes a single fret focused on details for the cockpit of the aircraft with a photoetch seat, seatbelts, instrument panel (including a piece of clear film used for the dial faces) side console details and gunsight.
In addition, this set includes the dipole from the radar antenna and other radar-altimeter and navigational antennas.
Replacing the plastic parts by this PE set will provide a more-to-scale looks, while simplifying the overall assembly of the radar antennas given that the dipoles and braces are a single piece. Well done Brengun!
Recommended.
I would like to thank Brengun and IPMS/USA for the review sample.