Inside the Ersatzteiliste (parts manual) for the Bf-109E is a special tools section. Before now, if you wanted to add this to your diorama, you were limited to scratchbuilding it, and then you still had to find the tools to fit. Eduard has made this a lot easier.

Contained on a single brass fret is a roll of tools, a special tool kit, and all the tools for both. The first assembly sequence is a tool roll which can be looped over the wing. There is a second one that is all folded up. These are both perfectly formed and textured to give that canvas look. The tools fit along a canvas strap. It might be easier to add this strap from tape, but the PE part is quite adequate. As a personal aside, my thought is to use the Eduard PE part as a template to cut the “canvas” roll out of masking tape, both for scale thickness and that more realistic canvas texture that masking tape suggests.

I was given Minicraft’s B-17G for a review. Just as I was about to start the project, I was at IPMS Las Vegas “Best of the West” contest, and found a set of 1/144 decals for the B-17G. The decals included in the kit were perfectly OK, but the subject matter of this sheet made me drag out my wallet and buy it.

The first plane on the sheet is “American Beauty”, 2S*G. A friend and co-worker of my father was the top turret gunner and flight engineer on this aircraft. So it has a personal connection to me.

THE DECAL

The decal sheet itself is very good. When you finish cutting out the decals for one aircraft, you still have a solid sheet, not something that looks like a lace doily. Good planning on their part, and I appreciate that.

The subject matter of the other three planes is also very interesting – “Little Miss Mischief” of the 91st Bomb Group, “My Devotion” (an F model) of the 351st BG, and the famous “A Bit o’ Lace” from the 427th BG.

I was quite excited to see Trumpeter start releasing some of the more modern Soviet armored vehicles. Not only are the kits nicely detailed, but they tend to go together quite well. Also, Trumpeter has no problem releasing several variants, unlike some other manufactures that release one base type and leave us modelers scrambling for aftermarket resin to do other variations. So, needless to say, after years of resisting the urge to purchase some resin “updates” to the old Skif T-64 kits, I was delighted to have a state-of-the-art tooling in my hands.

Box Stats

Within the box you get 566 parts in all.