Airscale has been producing some excellent aftermarket items, such as aircraft instrument decals. Until now, you had to punch them out and add them to the kit instrument panel. What if you wanted to build your own instrument panel? Well, until now you had out-of-production Waldron bezels, and that was pretty much it. Airscale now offers you some options…lots of options.

On a single brass photo etch fret is a plethora of levers, handles, and switches. There are actually 72 photo etch pieces. Some of these details will require you to fold them over. Many of the items are for WWII aircraft, but they can be easily adapted to later aircraft.

The instructions are on a two-sided full-color piece of card stock. One side contains the parts breakdown of the fret. The parts are in rows with letters assigned for the individual parts. The key at the bottom of the page will aid the modeler to get the right part and what it was originally designed for.

It is no secret that I love the Zvezda Bf-109Fs. They are remarkably well-engineered kits and the most accurate Fs on the market. There are only two pieces of aftermarket that I use for them, Vector’s correction set and the Eduard Zoom set.

This Eduard Zoom set includes a single fret of self-adhesive pre-painted photo etch. The components are all for the cockpit area. The amount of detail that Eduard puts into the instrument panels and placards is amazing, far superior to anything I can do with a paint brush. A clear acetate piece is included that has the gunsight reflectors on it.

The instructions are straightforward and easy to understand.

The Kit

This is a review of the Italeri 1/24 scale Mercedes-Benz 2448 Canvas Truck. The box is large and features photos of the built-up model on the top. Along the sides are 360-degree views of the model that can be used for reference. Inside the box you will find three individual bags of yellow, black, and grey styrene; there is a tree of chrome parts and a tree of clear parts, each wrapped individually in plastic bags. There is a super decal sheet which contains markings for two separate trucks, twelve soft rubber tires, and a twelve-page, well laid out instruction booklet. All of the parts trees are clearly marked. The first two pages of the instruction booklet contain a drawing of all the parts trees, making the individual parts easy to find. The instruction guide also calls out painting suggestions.