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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
Steve Collins
Published on
Company
Quickboost
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$6.00

For those of you who have acquired the Revell Halifax in 1/72, you may have noticed that it gives you lots of options, including three different types of exhausts. While they’re not at all bad as they come in the kit, you’ll need to hollow out the ends of the exhaust stacks and that can be very tedious when you’re doing stacks for four engines. Quickboost, as they usually do, have stepped in and done that for you.

This set is for the Type A exhaust, one of the more normal appearing types, and provide exhausts for all four engines. They are nicely cast, with no bubble and the ends already hollowed out for you. As usual, they’re a drop fit replacement for the kit parts and at the price, seem well worth it. After all, what is your time worth? Recommended.

Thanks go to Quickboost for providing the sample and to IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review it.

Review Author
William Mahoney
Paul Mahoney
Published on
Company
Revell
Scale
1/25
MSRP
$12.95

I usually write about various aircraft-related items, but when I saw this Revell 2015 SnapTite Mustang I thought my son could pitch in and help with a review. He is almost nine, is an IPMS Junior member, and has several models under his belt. William primarily builds aircraft—like his dad—but the Mustang is one of his favorite cars. While most of his builds have been glued together and painted, he is still right in the target audience for this SnapTite kit.

Book Author(s)
Yefim Gordon & Sergey Komissarov
Review Author
Grace Deck
Jim Deck
Published on
Company
Hikoki Publications
MSRP
$56.95

This isn’t book it’s a tome, and a well done one at that. The large 8.5” x 11” pages are chock full of information, photographs and drawings. The book is broken down into 7 chapters the first four of which are divided by specific eras with the last three tackling specific subjects. One entire chapter deals with the downing of both KAL flight KE902 and KE007.

This is a quality book, not your typical hobby shelf reference fodder. It is nicely bound on heavy stock paper and includes the dustcover as pictured. The pages are well laid out with crisp text and hundreds of unique photographs. The profile drawings are just icing on the cake.

Book Author(s)
Jose Fernandez, Przemysiaw Skulski
Review Author
Mike Hinderliter
Published on
Company
Mushroom Model Publications - MMP Books
MSRP
$27.00

Another addition to the Mushroom Model Publications Yellow Series of books is focused on the Douglas F3D Skyknight. This book is definitely focused towards the modeler with lots of black and white and color photos, color profiles of various schemes and markings, and scale plans in 1/72 scale.

The book is divided into the following sections

Review Author
Paul Mahoney
Published on
Company
AK Interactive
MSRP
$12.33

The name AK Interactive is probably familiar to many of us as a provider of some very useful weathering products. Although their weathering products work with any model, AK has primarily marketed its products to armor modelers. Recently, however, they have started producing some aircraft-specific products, such as the AK Air Series which currently has “Air Paint” sets (just Luftwaffe and RAF, but I believe more are in the pipeline) and “Air Weathering” sets (designed specifically to weather aircraft engines and landing gear). It looks to me like the “Aces High” magazine has been started to specifically showcase the usage of AK products on aircraft. A note on the cover states “Special Issue: 64 + 20 pages free”, so I suppose future issues will have 64 pages, as compared to this volume which has 84.