My thanks to Roger Wallsgrove, Editor-in-Chief of Mushroom Model Publications, who provided this review sample. I have had the pleasure of meeting him and his team at Nationals.

The Russo-Japanese War was the opening salvo in a series of conflicts that would dominate the first half of the 20^thcentury and upend the status quo of the world’s great powers. Waged at the height of European colonial period, it would signal Japan’s entry onto the world’s stage and portend the demise of the Russian Empire 12 years later. Russia, like Turkey was a “sick man” of Europe and Japan was ready to wrest control of the Far East from Moscow’s influence. The series of Japanese victories and the decimation of the Russian Navy shocked the world and provided a stage for President Theodore Roosevelt to increase the stature of the United States. Much was written soon after the Treaty of Portsmouth but the war and these respective writings were overshadowed by the epic struggle of the World War of 1914-1918. One hundred years later it is refreshing to re-visit such an important conflict.

This publication is edited in the UK and is dedicated to airplane models, as the title implies. It is 65 pages and printed in full color. There are 65 pages in an issue, this one in particular having 6 pages devoted to product reviews and the remaining 59 dedicated to the 7 outstanding models featured in the issue. It is printed on high quality heavy weight paper with a glossy finish. The cover is on heavier bond paper and should hold up well with repeated viewing.

This issue features the following builds:

For those of us who love nothing better than trying to figure out where all of those flying wires go to and how to attach them, New Zealand’s Wingnut Wings has been a blessing and the best thing that has happened to our hobby in many years. 1/32^ndscale is a fantastic scale for WWI aircraft, yet they don’t take up a lot of display room. The quality of the Wingnut Wings’ releases is still hard to digest, especially at their very reasonable price and free shipping, to boot. To complement their fantastic kits, they have now started releasing some equally stunning decals, all of which are printed in Italy by Cartograf. The registry is without fault; they are thin, and Wingnut Wings even recommends that a hair dryer be used to get their decals to conform to the model’s surface, instead of setting solutions. Amazingly, it works. Why, I don’t know, but there’s no cleanup afterwards.