Hobbico and Italeri USA once again earn appreciation from IPMS USA for providing a sample of a long-awaited product, the Italeri 1/32 F-35 Lightning II. Of course, the usual bow and thanks go to IPMS USA leadership for sending me this kit!

This kit is a medium sized box containing Italeri’s standard medium gray plastic, yellow-tinted clear canopy and other parts, a photoetch fret for some details, a small sheet of masking for only some/part of the Low-observable (LO) panels, and an excellenft Cartograf decal sheet with markings for US, Israeli, British, Australian, and Netherlands users.

Initial impression is good; the weapons bay will be the hard part, and this was proven out in construction. The detail is there and if you are not in a hurry will reward you with an excellent focus point for your efforts.

The normal thanks to Ross at SAC and his working crew for developing and producing an excellent metal set to replace the kit items, and IPMS USA for providing it to me to use!

Once again the jackpot is hit with another SAC gear replacement set. For the unaware, the Italeri 1/32 F-35A is a rather weighty model, and the kit gear is provided in multiple parts, all plastic. SAC does a few modifications such as incorporating the kit side braces into the main gear and nose gear, and molding them in one part each. With 13 total metal parts, including drag braces and extensions, shimmy damper and steering pump, this set makes a simple kit addition. This, when installed and combined with the trunnions and drag braces, makes a sturdy arrangement.

This kit is the first armor kit in the 1/35 Platz line from Dragon. They have taken the Panzer IV from their Girls Und Panzer line, re-boxed it and gave it new decals and instruction sheet. The molding is from 2012 and has about 175 parts, with DS tracks. This is quite a reduction in parts then from other Dragon kits. Slide molding technology allows Dragon to mold past subassemblies into one or two pieces. The box is overall white with just a black strip and one picture of the tank, no real box art like other Dragon kits.