For several years now, Academy Plastic Model Company has been producing a series of kid-friendly kits based on the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci. I love these little kits. I have the armored car in my office as a conversation piece. These are, perhaps, more toys than traditional model kits but are a perfect kind of kit to introduce kids to modeling. This particular kit is modeled after Leonardo’s air screw. According to da-vinci-inventions.com, Da Vinci sketched out his air screw in the 15^th century. The screw was manufactured from linen, wire, and reeds and was to be rotated by a crew of four men. It was never constructed and would have been an impractical flying machine to say the least. Nevertheless, it is testament to Da Vinci’s genius.

When they revamped Battlestar Galactica in 2003 they revamped many of the ships including the Viper fighters. They were retiring the Mk II as the new Mk VII was in service. Unfortunately, the Cylons had a way to disrupt the newer fighters rendering them powerless so the Mk II fighters had to be brought back into service to carry the fight. Later in the series the Mk VIIs were able to rejoin their earlier cousins and combat the Cylon tyranny.

Moebius brought out very nicely detailed 1/32^nd scale kits of both Viper versions as well as the new Cylon Raider but these kits didn’t really fit in with my collection of 72^nd scale fighters so I was very excited to see them release new kits of all 3 of these fighters in my scale and to make things better, you get 2 kits in each box. This review focus’ on the newest kit, the Viper Mark VIIs.

Quickboost is a company that specializes in drop-in resin replacement parts to enhance the appearance of your models. Being “drop-in” replacements, it is very rare you need you modify the original parts, hence the “quick” name.

In this case I am reviewing the Gun Barrels without pylons for the 1/48 F4U-5 day fighter from Hasegawa.

In this particular case the set is a “drop-in” conversion, as you don’t need to modify the original parts but there is no F4U-5 kit –that I know- without the rocket pylons.

As you can see from the pictures the resin parts have better surface detail plus removal points from the pouring stub are easier to hide than in their plastic counterparts. The diameter of the barrels seems to be a bit smaller in the resin parts.

Highly recommened.

I would like to thank Aires/Quickboost and IPMS/USA for the review sample.