Over the past year or so, we have seen a new supply of USS Arizona kits in all scales from Trumpeter, Dragon, and Hobby Boss. A popular scale seems to be 1/700 scale, where we have also seen a kit of the USS Pennsylvania. While both ships had generally the same look up till Pearl Harbor, the Penn later underwent extensive changes. My great uncle had the privilege of serving his country with the United States Navy, and was assigned to the USS Pennsylvania. On December 7th, he was at Pearl Harbor while the Penn was in drydock. He survived Pearl and continued on the Penn through the entire war, and was still with her up until she was scuttled after being used as a target ship for nuclear tests. (My uncle was actually part of the skeleton/scuttling crew and was the 4th to last person to set foot on the mighty ship.) With my family’s ties to the Pennsylvania class, I naturally purchased all of the recent model releases.
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The controls on the F-16 have a variety of switches and buttons on the control sticks. Plastic can only replicate this so far, plus on the kit parts there are mold lines. Quickboost has cleaned this up and added some really crisp detail.
Molded in light grey resin, you get four control sticks that are perfectly cast. Adding them will be simple enough, as there is a casting stub on the base. Really, all these little gems require is a good painting.
Highly recommended.
Thanks to Quickboost and IPMS/USA for the review copy.
I love the looks of the F-16 and, in particular, the Israeli versions with its unique paint schemes. This new set by Aires is for the Kinetic’s F-16C Barak Block 40.
The majority of the cockpit set is the five molded resin pieces, with four of them in light grey and one in light caramel. The detail is exquisite, especially the one-piece cockpit tub with ejector seat rails and side controls. How were they ever able to mold and pull that? I have no idea, but it is some of the finest casting I’ve ever seen anywhere. This is the typical quality that I’ve come to expect from Aires. Well, even if your control stick is broken off, Aires provides you with another one, so don’t fret if it is loose in the packaging.
Kagero’s limited edition (Red Series) 1/32 scale Pacific P-51D/F-6D Mustang decals is welcome news for large-scale Mustang fans. This is part #1 of what I assume will be a continuing series of beautiful sheets offered by them. Evidently, this sheet is sized to fit the Tamiya kit, but it’s not mentioned in the documents. The decals were printed by Cartograf and are crystal clear and look outstanding. Because of my slow progress building my own Mustang, I didn’t try to apply them. I didn’t think applying decals on bare plastic would really be very effective, although it did seem to work when I was 6. Anyway, the 8 page color documents are first rate. The artwork shows large, color profiles of both sides of the fuselage and the top and bottom of the wings. Also included is a brief history of each aircraft, accompanied by sketches of the pilots.
I’ve come to expect that Ultracast puts out some of the finest figures available anywhere. This latest release is just that. Sculpted by world renowned artist Mike Good, this piece is typically perfect. Molded in light cream-colored resin, the castings are blemish-free and perfectly cast. All the pour blocks are easily removed.
You get a body with a very thin film between the legs that is easily removed. The pose is very natural looking. You get a single arm for each side that is keyed to ensure alignment. The other thing is that they fall on a natural line so you can paint them separately if you’d like. The left hand is nicely molded with a cigarette between the fingers.