This is a review of an A-4 Skyhawk crew access ladder in 1/72 scale made of photo etch parts. Given the scale of the ladder, it is obvious that all parts are going to take some patience to remove from the PE sheet and apply to the ladder.

The package contains a photo etch sheet containing all the parts needed to construct the access ladder and a one-page instruction sheet.

Instructions

The instruction sheet clearly marks parts. The ladder construction has all the parts and their locations in an exploded view of assembly

Building the Ladder

I started out by laying the PE sheet on a strip of tape that I had rubbed on the back of my hand and removed a couple of times to reduce the stickiness of the tape. The parts are so small that I was afraid of the parts flying off into infinity when they were cut from the PE sheet.

This is a thin book with only 48 pages, but they are very high quality pictures. The book is an addition to the Warpaint series of books, this time about the Chipmunk, which is one of the most well-known post-war piston engine basic training aircraft. It was designed to replace the Tiger moth by de Havilland Canada and first flew mid-May 1946, the same year it entered service. The Chipmunk was used mainly by the RCAF and RAF.

The detailed color profiles are great for any modelers reference and the photos cover all types of the aircraft. I found this book fascinating and will be building a couple of the featured aircraft and this will be a fantastic reference for me to use. I recommend this book to everyone who likes and or builds Phantom’s

Thanks go to Guideline Publications for providing this book to review and IPMS USA for allowing me to review it.

Brengun has produced an accessory set for their P-51 1a kit.

What’s in the Package

This set contains a photo etch fret, clear acetate sheet with the instrument panel dials, 5 resin gun barrels and a single page instruction sheet. Upon inspection I noticed that a couple areas of the etched parts were not fully etched and that bending these would be not quite as easy as normal. The acetate sheet with the dials looked very nice but the gun barrels had a small problem…..two were warped.

Construction

It’s fair to say that most of this set deals with the cockpit, which is interesting in one respect, the kit has a one-piece closed canopy! Some minor “reducing” of some raised detail is required for the side walls but nothing real difficult. The control panel is pretty nice when completed but since you can’t see the rudder pedals, I decided to leave them out.