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Review Author
David Wrinkle
Published on
Company
True Details
Scale
1/32
MSRP
$14.99

Description

3 resin parts, decal sheet and a decal / paint guide to convert the stock Wingnut Wings SE5a 'Hisso' kit to James McCudden's B4863. Included with the conversion are the shortened exhaust stacks and a replacement cockpit deck representative of McCudden's aircraft. As an added bonus you get 8 resin parts used to construct a 1/32 scale figure of McCudden.

Review Author
Rod Lees
Published on
Company
Squadron Products
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$10.00

The first order of business: Extreme thanks to Squadron Mail order/MMD for providing IPMS/USA yet another review item. These folks are one of the oldest and most well-known plastic model kit distributors in the world, and we appreciate their providing us with review items!

This sheet highlights one of my favorite aircraft; the “Aardvark”, or F-111. Designed for use on the new Hobbyboss kits, it would be equally at home on the Academy versions.

The markings on this sheet are for three aircraft of a unit that I used to track while assigned to 17th AF in Sembach, Germany; the 20th FW from Upper Heyford in the UK. They used to fly down and “practice bomb” us on occasion… quite a “free” airshow, and guaranteed to soil your pants if you didn’t see them coming in full afterburner.

Review Author
Dan Mackay
Published on
Company
3D-Kits
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$11.64

I'm a big Spitfire fan and I was really excited to review this new item from 3D-Kits. The decal sheet provides marking for four Spitfires. You get two identical sprues containing all the parts needed to convert two Spitfire Mk I's to Mk II standards. This set reminds me of the old Airform conversion set for 1/72 Spitfires from the mid-seventies, but much better. The parts are flash free and very nicely molded. A new seat, control column, Rotol propeller, blunt spinner and teardrop shaped Coffman starter fairing complete the conversion parts. This conversion is intended for Airfix (old and new tool), and Tamiya Spitfire kits. Although it may also fit the aging Hasegawa, Heller, and Revell kits as well (I don't have these kits handy and could not verify). The new parts are direct replacements for kit parts. However I found that the new seat will require a little adjustment to fit the Airfix kit to get an acceptable result. The decals options are as follows:

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
Company
Hasegawa
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$48.00

Editor's note: The kit's title is "Natural Metal"; however the author opted to use a different scheme for reasons explained in his text.

History

The P-40 history is covered in plenty of detail. The P-40N was the last and most produced version of this iconic fighter. In 1943 the 49th Fighter Group was stationed in the Southwest Pacific. They had been flying the P-40E, but they were getting very war weary. Enter the P-40N. The N model was assigned to the flight leads. One of those was Lt. Sammy Pierce. At that time he had three kills from flying the P-40Es. In keeping with his practice of naming his aircraft after a feature film, the P-40N was emblazoned with “Kay The Strawberry Blonde”. The crew chief side had “The Hialeah Wolf” on the right side.

Kit