If you are tired of big building projects and long for a quick and easy fix…Zvezda has just the right medicine. It’s a 1/200 scale snap kit of the venerable old Junkers Ju 52, complete with a model stand and a war game playing (movement) card. Yes, the main reason this kit exists is as something to be used by the war game segment of our hobby.

The Junkers Ju 52 (nicknamed Tante Ju – "Auntie Ju" – and Iron Annie) was a German transport aircraft manufactured from 1932 to 1945. It saw both civilian and military service during the 1930s and 1940s. During WW II it was used by the Luftwaffe as a troop and cargo transport and served briefly (earlier, during the Spanish Civil War) as a medium bomber.

While it’s not the sleekest, fastest, or prettiest of jets, I love the Skyknight. Part of the reason is I love nightfighters (and not just because the paint scheme is easy), and this was one of the last birds to fit that title. Part of it is it flew during the Korean and Vietnam wars, two eras of history that interest me. And part of it is that it is the only US jet to fly in both conflicts.

Plamo Manuals are How-To guides for building specific types of models from Model Art in Japan, a prolific publisher of high-quality periodicals on current modeling subjects. This issue (Plamo Manual No. 8) is devoted to converting aircraft models. The theme is to take a currently available aircraft kit and convert it to another version of the real-life aircraft for which no kit is available (or is out of production). For each conversion, pages of small color and B&W photos show how to make the changes needed to change a kit into something else. The text is almost entirely in Japanese, but the photos are self-explanatory. This issue of Plamo Manual also shows how to make certain structures from scratch. Thus, advanced modelers would enjoy this issue, and beginners may need to devote extra time and effort to understand the steps.