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Many thanks to Mr. Ross MacMillan of Scale Aircraft Conversions and the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to try this neat conversion and replacement set for the Italeri V-22. I am delighted to report on another sweet add-on.
This detail set from Scale Aircraft Conversions is for the Hasegawa 1/72nd scale A-3 Skywarrior. The kit has been around for some time and although not a newer rerelease it is still available. This set is a direct replacement for the kits landing gear and has a few modifications that help improve the Hasegawa kit. This conversion set has 7 parts, which includes the main landing gear legs, the nose gear and the oleo scissors and retraction struts for the main gear. The nose gear comes complete with the wheel molded in place. This appears to be a direct copy of the kit gear. As a result you will be required to open up and clean the space between the nose gear fork and the tire.
When I received the aftermarket SAC landing gear for the 1/72 Academy P38 Lightning I went to get out the kit I had and realized the one I had was 1/48 scale, so I had to quick get one off ebay to do the review. Once I found one at a reasonable price and received the kit I finally got down to business. I opened the kit and got the SAC gear out for comparison. After removing the gear from the kit sprues I laid them out to compare them side by side. I was kind of disappointed with the look of the SAC gear, they had some flash on the gear and some mold lines that were very noticeable. Then I looked over the kit gear and found that Academy has some very good gear right out of the box, the mold lines and crisp detail were almost better than the SAC gear.
This set of finely turned stainless steel and brass gun barrels for is designed for the new Academy USS Indianapolis kit. It does not include a styrene turret face, as is included in the set designed for the Trumpeter kit, but could undoubtedly be used to augment the Trumpeter San Francisco class cruisers as well.
Each of the 8” barrels are slightly tapered with very finely defined segmentations. The short stubs at the end of the barrel allows for easy insertion into the kit’s turret face. Although the barrel openings are not as pronounced as compared to other Master barrel sets (or the kit’s barrels), these barrels are noticeably longer, more even and, no doubt, more accurate than the kit parts. A couple of my kit’s barrel ends were noticeably uneven. That’s not an issue with the Master barrels.
The F-104 Starfighter was one of the most famous and long lasting aircraft in history. Entering service with the USAF in the 50s, variants of the F-104 flew into the mid-2000s. The G model was manufactured under license in several NATO countries was used as a multi role fighter-bomber due to its increased range and load capacity. The 104S is an upgraded version that the Italian Air force flew until replaced by the Eurofighter Typhoon.
