Hasegawa continues to offer easy-to-build Focke Wulf 190s; the latest one is the last short-nosed 190 to be produced during the war, the Fw-190A-9. The BMW-801TS-powered A-9 variant is identified with a larger propeller, an extra cooling fin on the fan, and a bulged canopy. This limited edition release is the basic A-8 kit from Hasegawa with some white metal parts – the cooling fan and a wider chord wooden propeller which are all that are needed to convert the A-8 into an A-9.

The kit is molded in typical Hasegawa quality light grey plastic that is flash free with subtle panel lines. There are four sprues of grey plastic, a sprue of clear plastic, one set of poly caps, and the two white metal parts. I did notice that the wings had three strange holes on the upper surface. These are easily filled. It looks like they are for the stag antler-type antennas, so I’m sure we’ll see more variants.

This set is a single fret of excellent relief-etched material which fixes the seats on the HK Models 1/32 B-25. So, you ask, what’s wrong with the kit seats? Not much, but research does indicate that the co-pilot’s seat was not a full seat like the pilot’s, more of a half seat. The fret includes 35 parts which allow you to build more detailed and correct seats.

Construction will be helped by use of one of the PE bending tools on the market today – I used a Hold and Fold and it is much more precise making the bends than any other way. Also, you will need some plastic rod to construct the seat mounts – two pieces of 1.2mm rod, each 26.5mm long, and for the smaller seat, two pieces of 1.2mm rod each 14.5mm long. I used stock styrene rod from the LHS.

This book looks at all of the piston engine fighter aircraft used by Sweden from 1925 to 1946 and their paint schemes. Each aircraft is covered with many period pictures, some even in color. There is a section on the operational history, a listing of production numbers, as well as a chart detailing the individual aircraft history of all aircraft of each type that served Sweden. Each aircraft section ends with color notes spelling out the colors used for each. While not in FS numbers, these callout will still prove useful to the modeler. The book is more of a history of these aircraft in Swedish service with color information included than it is an in-depth analysis of the colors used on these aircraft.