Object 279 was a Soviet prototype tank designed in 1959 to be capable of operating on a nuclear-biological-chemical battlefield and even survive the blast wave from a nuclear weapon (from a distance, anyway). The tank had a bowl-shaped body to channel blast energy around itself. The vehicle carried a 130mm main gun capable of firing discarding sabot shells that could penetrate over 400mm of armor. The tank’s own armor was up to 319mm thick. The tank had four tracks to assist it in going over exceedingly rough terrain. In spite of its advantages, the tank was never put into production due to gearbox reliability issues and its inability to cross some bridges and move in swampy areas, due to its weight.

Kit

The kit comes with four parts trees, three parts trees for the individual track links, the upper and lower hull sections, a PE fret, a small length of copper wire for the tow cables, and the instruction booklet. Also, there is a print of the box art photo.

Caracal Models started to release decals in 2011 and has released some of the neatest and best markings to come out in the last couple years. Kinetic’s S2 Tracker is a neat kit and everyone I have seen build is exactly the same color – gull gray over white. While that's an attractive scheme, Caracal Models dug deep and gave modelers another option.

The Trackers on these sheets have decals for two S2F-1’s with the large radar above the cockpit but in overall gloss sea blue. There are two separate markings:

• BuNo 133320, VS-21 from the USS Princeton in 1956
• BuNo 133258, VS-20 from the USS Princeton in 1956

Both planes are overall blue with black anti-glare panel and deicer boots. The radome is also tan. The decals come in a single sheet and are colorful, well printed, and awesome.

The November issue of Scale Aircraft Modelling is another excellent piece of scale art. There are the usual two Feature Articles, an Aviation in Profile piece, industry news, and a series of Compact Build Reviews.

The two feature articles for this issue are a 1/32nd scale build of the HobbyBoss P-61 Black Widow and a 1/72nd scale build of Airfix's Lancaster B.III Dambuster. The HobbyBoss P-61 build by James Ashton goes into some detail of the build and adds True Details Wheels and Kits-World Decals. Where this article really shines is in the description of weathering and painting. The articles details paint chipping using the AK interactive chipping system, and also the post-shading and using the oils to weather. The effects are superb and the article is lavishly illustrated.