Furball Aero Design is a new decal company. They have teamed with Detail & Scale who I have admired and trusted for many years, to turn out interesting and correct decals and marking schemes for 1/48 modern US aircraft. They also have vinyl mask sets for those kits.

This decal sheet consists of all of the markings you would need to do two Blue Angels aircraft, either two TF-9s or two F9Fs, or one of each.

The Blue Angels flew the Cougar from 1954 to 1957, when it was replaced with the F11F Tiger.

The decals are printed by Cartograf of Italy. I put Cartograf as the industry standard for quality decals. My basis for this is toughness of the decal film and the fact that it only takes about 15 seconds in the water for even the largest decal to come loose from the backing. Even I can get a decent looking set of markings using Cartograf.

Thanks again to our steadfast IPMS supporter, Ross at SAC… and to IPMS leadership for providing it to me for review. Metal gear rule!

This set simply replaces the main and nose gear for the new Airfix 1/48 Folland Gnat. This is an excellent little kit, and the kit gear will serve the purpose out of the box, but the simplicity of installing metal gear on the assembled airframe is too good to pass up.

Parts include two main gear struts with extension and drag arms incorporated, and a nose gear. All three parts are one-piece castings, which justifies their use in my mind. Airfix is on a roll, and their kits just slide together with little fuss. The only complaint I personally have is the plastic is a bit soft, so small things like landing gear, pitot tubes, etc., tend to be very “bendy” and flexible. The Gnat may be miniscule, but the landing gear is still vulnerable.

The Hasegawa X-29 in 1/72 scale has been around since the mid1980's and, as far as I know, is the only injection-molded kit of this interesting aircraft. Though accurate in outline, it is a very basic kit lacking detail in the wheel wells and cockpit. As was the norm with Hasegawa kits of that era, cockpit detail only consists of decals for the instrument and side panels, and a simplified ejection seat. However, RES-IM fills this void with their beautiful, full color, photo-etched set. If this set has a familiar look to you, that’s because Eduard produces it. Their logo is prominently displayed on the bottom of the fret.