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Review Author
Rod Lees
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$13.95

IPMS/USA thanks Ross and his Team at SAC for supporting the IPMS USA reviewer corps with one more of many monthly releases, with extremely useful and well-thought out landing gear additions for the modeling crowd out here in the modeling world. And thanks to IPMS leadership for sending it for review.

This review is for the SAC landing gear released for the 1/48 2016 Eduard release series ME-109F and G models. As such, it covers the majority of ‘109s’ available in the current Eduard catalog.

I bought several of these SAC sets when they came out, because I found the kit gear did not like handling on the shelf. The tail wheel assembly was the major culprit, and this set fixes the issue by being robust and able to “give” without snapping. It has the added benefit of being able to be carefully bent back into position if tagged by the cat, dog, angry wife, or husband, etc.

Review Author
James Binder
Published on
Company
Hasegawa
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$45.99

Construction

Opening the box you’ll notice that this is the original 1970s’ mold Neptune, and the molds are starting to show their age. Many of the parts had some bit of flash to them. Thankfully though they were very easy to clean up. The second thing you’ll notice is that the directions have many photos of Neptune’s, but they are of the Japanese version of the aircraft. The build though is the same no matter what version you are doing so no need to worry that the photos don’t match the exact aircraft.

Review Author
Mike Lamm
Published on
Company
MiniArt
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$16.99

MiniArt is a Ukrainian company specializing in 1/35 figures and some vehicle kits. The figures tend to be packaged in groups with unique poses or unusual subjects. Over the years, they have become one of the leaders in injection molded figures, and more recently, they have started issuing sets of modern military figures.

This kit is one of their newer releases and features figures to be posed with modern German AFVs. The kit includes five figures in various poses, and includes a female crew member representing many modern armies that have women serving in combat roles. The four male figures are posed in a standing position that is meant to be posed in the turret hatch of the vehicle. The female figure is posed sitting.

Review Author
Allan Murrell
Published on
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$17.95

This is a white metal landing gear set is to for the Modelcollect 1/72 B2-2A Spirit aircraft.

The white metal parts are good but I found that the kit parts had a better defined details. They are an acceptable replacement for the already well details kit parts. The advantage is these white metal parts will provide more strength and last longer than the kit parts.

The parts include the main two gear struts which replace part numberA27, Front strut which replaces part number C29 and support strut which replaces part number C32.

The parts are well cast; you do need to sand off the few cast seams and metal pour points. The main struts were a little twisted and needed strengthening to allow the correct installation. The parts were a perfect fit to the existing mount and were easy to assemble. The only issue I did have, was getting the main landing gear lights part number A21 to adhere to the white metal.

Review Author
Jim Stepanek
Published on
Company
Revell
Scale
1/24
MSRP
$24.95

This is a review of the Revell ’80 Jeep Honcho “Ice Patrol” kit.

Engine

There was little flash on the engine parts but there is also very little detail. You get just a very basic engine with a way oversize fanbelt.

Interior

Only faint engraving can be seen on the door panels making it very difficult to detail paint. The kit does have 2 different decals for the gauge cluster.

Body

The body went together pretty well. The rear portion of the box is a separate piece that I didn’t care for, but it fit very well. You get a choice with decals in either blue tone or orange. My choice was the blue to go along with the Tru-Color metallic bright Atlantic Blue paint. The inside of the box was painted with Rustoleum texture paint for a spray in bedliner look.

The kit comes with a toolbox, 2 gas cans and a snowmobile. Once assembled, the sled won’t fit in the box of the truck with the tailgate up.