Aaron Skinner started out early in publishing, founding his High School student newspaper in the early eighties. He has been an avid modeler since the age of six (supported by his grandfather). He graduated from The University of Queensland in 1992 with his degree in Journalism and History. He has worked with several newspapers in Arkansas and Texas as a photographer and reporter from 1994 until in joined Fine Scale Modeler in 2006. He was promoted from Associate Editor to Senior Editor in 2015 and has authored several modeling books, including: Essential Skills for Scale Modelers (2011), Modeling Airliners (2012), and Airbrushing for Scale Modelers (2015). He is active representing Fine Scale Modeler and providing presentations at contests and shows, recently returning to Dallas for Squadron’s EagleQuest in June 2017.

The Mitsubishi A6M7 Type 0, according to Wikipedia, is based on the A6M6, which in turn is based on the A6M5c. The bottom line for this variant of the venerable Zero is that it was designed for a role as a fighter bomber. It was fitted with 3 - 13.2mm Machine guns (1 in the fuselage and 2 wing mounted) as well as 2 wing mounted 20mm canons. Additionally, it has hard points to carry various combinations of external bombs and or external fuel tanks.

The MER (Multiple Ejector Rack) is a weapons unit which attaches to an aircraft pylon and can hold up to six individual weapons such cluster bombs or standard dumb bombs. The US Air Force stopped using these in the early 1990’s but many pictures can be found with these attached to B-52’s, F-4’s, A-4’s, F-105’s, etc. In other words, they were used frequently. Many model kits have a simplified version of this but Eduard has upped the game with this release in 1/32^nd scale.

Eduard set comes with three complete MER’s and a total of 78 cast resin parts in their usual gray resin. There is also some wire to add for the connections also and a full set of markings to go with each one.