According to ScaleMates.com, AFV Club has released no less than sixteen different kitting’s of the venerable British Centurion, five of which depict the various Israeli Defense Force (IDF) versions. The subject of this review is the Sho’t Kal Gimel Type II, which is identified on the box top as being from the time period of the 1982 Lebanon war (“Operation Peace for Galilee”). ‘Sho’t’ translates to ‘Whip’ and Kal is an abbreviation of where the powerplant was manufactured (Continental). Each new version of the IDF Centurion was given a new afterword which comes from a letter in the Semitic abjad, the alphabet or ‘writing system’ used in the Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, and Urdu languages. In this case, ‘Gimel’ is the third letter in the abjad.

For those wanting to do dioramas and figures, there is a lot of guns involved and Master Model has come to the aid of modelers everywhere with two sets. They both represent .50 caliber machine gun rounds with an options of spent shell casings or full cartridges. Each set contains 25 pieces of magnificent metal work.

Instructions

The kit instructions are printed on 8 half-sized sheets, including the aircraft’s history, a sprue diagram and color guide, 3 sheets of exploded assembly drawings, 3 sets of color four views showing two Mk. III’s and one Mk. I.

Decals

Decals are provided for the three aircraft represented in the drawings. When I obtained the review kit at the Phoenix IPMS Convention, there were no decals with the kit. I contacted Special Hobby and they promised to send a set of decals. I waited a couple of months and finally just used decals from my spares box, printing the numbers on my computer. Naturally, I had just installed the decals when an envelope came, from all places Malta, containing the kit decals. I used a few of them and the results were most satisfying.