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Thank you to the Eduard Company for sending this masking set for review, it is always a pleasure to see what your new products bring to the scale-modeling world. Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work in getting us modeling products to review, the reviews posted, and the news spread to the world.
Eduard Models has repacked the very good AvantGarde AMK L-29 in 1/48 scale. Eduard provides a striking Tiger finish, with decals for each stripe. It also offers a photoetch fret and masks, but these add-ons are not part of the original Weekend box. They are items FE903 and EX596. I had the opportunity to review the extra items together with the Weekend box, so I went ahead and review them all together.
I really like that Eduard now is offering PE and Masks in the same month that they release a Weekend item. That truly allows the modeler to customize the level of detail he or she wants to use in finishing the model.
In the box you find 4 sprues (one clear) of the recently released 1/48 AMK L-29. You find what you can expect of a brand new mold: no flash, sharp panel lines, small sprue gates, firm but not brittle plastic.
The first prototype of the Fw 190 took to the air on June 1st, 1939 but due to some minor faults (Ok, so there were enough problems that the RLM halted development) it was not accepted into the Luftwaffe until 1941. June 1941 saw the Luftwaffe accept the first 100 Fw 190A-1s that were armed with four 7.9mm MG 17s. November of 41 saw the next version, 190A-2, introduced with two MG 17s and two MG 151s of 20mm caliber in the wings. Part of this series received an additional pair of 20mm MG FFs. The A-2 was powered by the modified BMW 801 C-2 engine and problems with the engine rear bank of cylinders overheating were finally solved by the simple introduction of a ventilation slot on the two sides of the engine cowling as in the A-1 version.
The Etruscans are sometimes regarded as the fore-runners of the later Roman civilization, and they certainly appear to have had enormous influence over the development of that empire, and yet despite this, relatively little is really know today about them. Their language has only ever been partially translated and very little written documentation survives except later tomes by Romans and Greeks which are debatably accurate, to say the least. What is generally believed is that the Etruscans were something of an amalgam culture, having some seafaring antecedents as well as people from the Asian subcontinent and other places (which seems to suggest they were very much a merchant culture with extensive trade routes). However, there are other later writers who claimed they were native to the area of Northern Italy, so go figure.
Two Bobs Aviation Graphics is one of leaders in aviation decals with an impressive variety in 1/32, 1/48 and 1/72 scale. This latest release has very interesting markings used by VAQ-209 with a “Star Wars” theme on the aircraft. A black/white Darth Vader helmet, the word “VADER” on the spine and VADER 1 (white decal hard to see in picture) on a black fuel tank are on the CAG aircraft. The line jets have a gray/white Darth Vader helmet (third decal sheet) on the tail.
