History Brief

The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is an all-weather, long-range supersonic jet interceptor aircraft/fighter-bomber originally developed for the United States Navy by McDonnell Douglas Aircraft. It was also adopted by the U.S. Marine Corps and the U.S. Air Force. The Phantom is a large fighter with a top speed of over Mach 2.2. It featured a tandem two-seat with twin-engines. It can carry more than 18,000 pounds (8,400 kg) of weapons, including air-to-air missiles, air-to-ground missiles, and various bombs. The F-4 was designed without an internal cannon, but later models incorporated an M61 Vulcan rotary cannon. Beginning in 1959, it set 15 world records for in-flight performance, including an absolute speed record, and an absolute altitude record.

Thanks to Aires/Quickboost for providing more of their excellent aftermarket parts for IPMS USA to review, and to IPMS leadership for sending it my way.

The new Airfix Mark 1 1/48 Spitfire is, by all accounts, an excellent kit. Detail is on par with 1/32 kits… and will make a show-stopper if built to the max.

One area which can, however, be improved on,is the Rotol Propeller. The kit items are slightly heavy; a resin replacement is definitely in order!

The Quickboost item addresses two areas; the thickness of the propeller blades themselves, and the spinner itself. The kit item has a baseplate, to which a propeller assembly is attached (it is keyed, so you can’t really mess it up), after which you install the spinner itself.

Once more, a quick review for a quick upgrade; Quickboost has provided 12 miniscule Resin gun barrels with oval cooling vents for use with the Airfix Lancaster B II. This is the Hercules radial-engined Lancaster release, but the gun barrels will work on this kit and their recent other Lancaster B I and III Merlin engine released kits as well. As noted in my other review of the .303 barrels with round holes, these should work on just about any aircraft requiring .303 gun barrels. As a note, the oval perforation gun barrels are slightly shorter than the round perforation barrels.

The muzzles are hollow, and the simulation of the oval perforations is well done. In my case, painting them black then using the side of a #2 pencil and (GENTLY) polishing with a soft cloth, I was able to bring out the detail.