During World War 2 the Russians created a large number of flamethrower-equipped vehicles, useful for burning Germans out of strongpoints. Some of them replaced a turret or hull machine gun position with the weapon. Others, such as the OT-130, replaced the main gun itself and made this a dedicated flame thrower tank.

Like the original vehicle itself, Hobby Boss’ OT-130 tank is a modification of the tried-and-true T-26, which by this time in the war had outlived its usefulness as a main battle tank. The 45mm main gun was removed and replaced with a flamethrower unit and its appropriate internal tankage. The kit itself features over 900 parts including two sheets of photoetch and seeming hundreds of tiny pins used to assemble the workable tracks. There is no interior provided, although all of the crew hatches do open. No figures are provided with the kit, although it comes with a clear lens for the headlight.

The Revell 1/25 scale “Jungle Jim” Rail Dragster is a re-release of a series of dragsters produced in the mid-1970s. This particular kit represents a car driven by “Jungle” Jim Liberman. If forum comments are correct, this is not a representation of any specific car or race, but rather a generic representation of one of his cars. If you want to build something specific, a bit of research will likely be necessary.

The kit comes in Revell’s typical 9” x 7” model box, where you’ll find four sprues of white plastic, one chrome sprue, one black sprue with the rear tires, and a vinyl-type sprue for the front tires.

The largest sprue contains the dragster’s body, seat, and wings. There are some heavy ejection pin marks, but fortunately they are on sides that are not visible. I didn’t notice any sinking on the visible sides, so the parts shouldn’t require much cleanup.

Scale Aircraft Conversions has released a set of main and rear landing gear parts for Hobby Boss Fw 190s in 1/48 scale. The set includes four parts: two main landing gear struts and a two-part rear landing gear (which proves to be a godsend—more on that later).

The two main gear are drop in replacements. However, you’ll want to compare them to the kit struts to make sure you install each gear leg on the correct side of the aircraft; you could easily install them in reverse, which would give you an incorrect stance. The easiest way to make sure they are correctly installed, is to ensure that the torque link is facing back, towards the tail. Before painting, I removed the faint seam lines and polished the retraction strut parts to a shiny silver. This was left in natural metal by masking the area off. Polishing the gear is a great way to replicate the shiny look, and although its a little hard to see behind the wheel and gear flap once assembled, it looks great.