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Introduction: The primary organization of the IPMS/USA Review website is by IPMS/USA National Contest Class. Within each Class there are sub-menus by kits, decals, books, etc. The Miscellaneous Class is for items that are not class specific or that cross two or more classes.

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Manufacturers, publishers, and other industry members: IPMS/USA is pleased to offer your company the opportunity for product reviews. All product reviews are performed by IPMS/USA members, and are posted in the publicly-accessible section of our website. With very few exceptions, we perform full build reviews of new kit releases, aftermarket products, and supplies. If you would care to provide product samples for review, please contact John Noack, IPMS/USA 1st VP.

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Review Author
Rob Benson
Published on
Company
Furball Aero-Design
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$6.99

Thank you Furball Aero-Design for sending these excellent decals for review. Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for letting me review them! I am honored to contribute back to the scale-modeling community.

Six F-14 sets of over-the-intake walkways are provided on a 4 x 4 ¼ inch (100 x 110 mm) sheet. The decals have minimal carrier film. There are two sets in each of three colors: black, dark gull gray, and engine gray. Decal opacity is excellent. Test decals worked very well with Microscale solutions and plain water. The decals are thin and durable, snugging down nicely without coaxing. I did not try stronger solutions like Solvaset, but I do not believe that such solutions would be needed. In short, these simple decals work, and work well.

Review Author
Rob Benson
Published on
Company
Airscale Model Aircraft Enhancements
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$11.99

Thank you Airscale Model Aircraft Enhancements for sending these excellent decals for review. Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for letting me review them! I am honored to contribute back to the scale-modeling community.

Airscale Model Aircraft Enhancements’ tagline is “High resolution cockpit detailing for aircraft modelers” and this decal sheet is an excellent example of their philosophy. A compact 3 1/16 x 2 3/8 inch (60 x 80 mm) sheet is richly populated with a wide variety of high-resolution modern jet aircraft instrument gauges and screens. All decals have minimal carrier film. A thin transparent acetate sheet, about 2 inches square, is included for adding instrument cover glass.

Review Author
Paul R. Brown
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$11.95

As with many of SAC’s sets, this set provides a one for one replacement for the kit parts. It consists of just five parts, two main landing gear struts, two retraction struts and a tail wheel. The parts are nicely cast and have just as slight cast line where the mold halves met, but this is easily cleaned up with either a fine sanding stick or a metal wheel in your Dremel tool at low speed. The retraction struts are very thin, so be careful in handling them as white metal is much more pliable than the plastic kits parts, but unlike the kit parts, the metal parts do not spring back to their original shape if bent or moved around, they stay in the shape you last put them in.

Review Author
Rod Lees
Published on
Company
Master Model
Scale
1/32
MSRP
$10.00

Master Models once again provides IPMS USA with examples of machine-shop excellence… We are extremely thankful to Piotr for providing examples of his work to review.

As you can see by the product photographs, these .50 caliber browning machine gun barrels are exquisite works of art. Designed to fit one of the two 1/32 Lighting models currently available, you receive four different length .50 caliber barrel assemblies, and two separate types of 20MM cannon barrels which were utilized on some variants of the Lightening.

What is really impressive about this set is you are provided with the drilled cooling jackets, which I challenge anyone to do at home with tubing and your personal micro drill set! I know I can’t… so this is one area (of several) where Master Models’ products shine.

Besides the cooling jackets, you are provided with hollow barrels, and mount rings,

Review Author
Dave Morrissette
Published on
Company
Furball Aero-Design
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$21.99

As the Navy transitions away from the venerable EA-6B’s into the new EA-18G Growlers, the planes have started to get more elaborate markings and kits have become available to replicate the plane. Hasegawa took their excellent F-18F kit and has issued several iterations. Maybe it is just me but most of the aftermarket decal companies have been slow to respond to some of these new releases. Fortunately for us modelers, Furball Aero-Designs is not one of those and has great new releases. This one is for the Hasegawa kit and includes a whopping 12 wonderful growlers and has enough decals to actually build two full planes.