Thank you to the wonderful folks at Casemate Publishers and to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to review these two very timely detailed volumes describing the He-219. The Heinkel 219 Uhu was a highly effective but under-utilized Luftwaffe night fighter, with a variety of innovations including obliquely firing guns and the first operational ejection seats. The two Kagero monographs described here provide an excellent resource for any modeler constructing and replicating this extraordinary aircraft.

Squadron is one of the mainstay companies in the United States for our hobby, and they have been making great strides in providing customers great items at reasonable prices. In this case, their release of the Avionix-range of resin accessories is proving quite valuable. We cannot thank Squadron enough for their support of the hobby, and IPMS USA in particular by providing us new releases. On to the subject of this review: The Avionix front cockpit for Hobby Boss’ 1/32 P-61!

I’m a bit tardy on this review; I received the Avionix review item a month or so ago, but the reason is I needed to purchase a kit to use it on, (I thought the backorder would arrive before the review item) and they keep selling out! Once I had it, I could use it to review the upgrade while meeting the reviewer corps requirement of “Use the set if you can…” I thought it would be an easy to find one, but no… I finally got one about two weeks ago, and here we are.

One of the only complaints I have seen regarding the superlative 1/48 F6F Hellcat released by Eduard a few years ago was with respect to the wheels provided in the kit. The kit parts are considered to be too thin, most likely representing the wheels/tires fitted to the prototype and very early Hellcats.

Ironically, Eduard themselves have now release a Brassin wheel set for the F6F that fixes this problem with their own kit. This resin accessory comes with a pair of crisply molded wheels/tires, with a separate pair of hubs and a set of Eduard kabuki masks to ease with painting. The tires have a diamond tread pattern (as opposed to the smooth tires of the kit-provided pieces), and the detail is extremely crisp.