Italeri has released a brand new mold F-35B, the STOVL (short-take-off and vertical landing) version of the F-35 family currently in use by the Italian Navy, Royal Navy and US Marine Corps.

Current military planning assumes that in any conflict, stealth capabilities are needed during the first few days of combat which will see action against enemy radars and later on aircrafts can trade-off “stealthness” for payload by using external pylons. When the F-35B is carrying a full payload -ie with external pylons-, it is known as “Beast” mode and Italeri provides you everything you need to have your model in “Beast” mode, even adding a couple of trolleys to show the extra ordinance in a mini-diorama or vignette, but no figures are included.

I don’t think I’m alone in the feeling that when building an airplane kit, the most challenging aspect (at least in terms of painting) is inevitably the cockpit. And within the cockpit, the most challenging aspect is almost always the instrument panels. Over the years I’ve developed a pretty steady hand at this kind of work, but that doesn’t mean I actually enjoy it. It’s usually with a sigh of relief when I can set down an instrument panel with a full paint job on it.

Red Fox Studios, a company out of Hungary, has come up with a product line that I am now head over heels in love with. They are releasing a series of detail sets which include not only full-color instrument sets for various aircraft, but fully three-dimensional instrument panels at that, with every instrument and button fully realized. I have literally never seen anything like them before, and I am mesmerized.

Fans of the original Star Trek series will recall such classic episodes as The Galileo Seven, where one of the Enterprise’s shuttlecraft, the Galileo, and her (7) crew members are trapped on an alien planet and are being attacked by mysterious hairy beasts with weak pole-throwing abilities….