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Review Author
Dave Morrissette
Published on
May 26, 2016
Company
Eduard
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$54.95

Eduard continues its “full meal deal kits” this time with Accurate Miniatures 1/48th scale SBD-5. For those who haven’t seen them, Eduard takes a very good kit, adds resin, photoetch and masks and bundles it into one solid kit. Let’s look at the contents. First, the highly detailed Accurate Miniatures SBD-5 kit. The full kit is here with all the parts including optional position canopies, nice engine detail and wonderful engraved detail. There was the barest flash present on a couple parts only. The resin parts for this include the tires which have two optional outer hubs, a tail wheel and parts for the gun. The decals are from Cartograf and have five excellent options. Markings are provided for the following:

Book Author(s)
Tony Buttler
Review Author
Frank Landrus
Published on
May 26, 2016
Company
Hikoki Publications
MSRP
$56.95

Tony Buttler was born in 1956, and joined High Duty Alloys in Redditch in 1974 as a metallurgist. For nearly 20 years he was closely involved in the testing of aluminum and titanium airframe and engine components for many of the world’s most important airplanes. It was during this timeframe that his interest in military aircraft grew into a passion. Since 1995, Tony has been a freelance aviation historian, with this book being his eighteenth major release. He has also written many titles for the Warpaint series of monographs as well as many articles for most of the popular historical aviation magazines.

Review Author
Rod Lees
Published on
May 26, 2016
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$19.95

Ross at SAC just keeps cranking these things out. THANKS VERY MUCH for sending IPMS USA another of your expansive line of metal landing gear, and thanks also to IPMS USA leadership for sending it on to me to review.

This is the now-expected, much improved upgrade to the kit plastic. The real SU-24 has a complex landing gear which is, per Russian standard, designed to allow the aircraft to operate from less-than-optimal runways. Trumpeter has done a great job in emulating their design engineering, but due to the limitations of injection molding, has turned the already complex gear into a more complex assembly. The main gear consists of one core (either metal or plastic, builder’s choice), two strut halves, two gear swing arm halves with axles, and detail parts and struts. To their credit, they include metal gear in the basic kit, which, when complete, does a great job of holding up this large aircraft (It’s the size of an F-111… that’s pretty big for a figher bomber).

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
May 25, 2016
Company
Eduard
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$22.95

One of the best looking aircraft of WWI, in my opinion, is the Albatros series of fighters. This streamlined plywood aircraft was widely used during the war. Flown by many of the great aces such as Manfred von Richtofen it proved itself a worthy warplane. Despite this, the Albatros had a fatal flaw, in that the lower wing would twist and occasionally fail.

The kit contains two sprues of light grey plastic. The plastic has fine engraved panel lines and raised access panels. It is beautifully detailed. There are two frets of photo etch. One is pre-painted, and the other is brass. There is also a set of masks to aid in painting the wheels, an oil cooler, and the red surround on the tail surfaces, should you decide to use that marking option. Decals are printed by Cartograf, so you know they are perfect. There are markings for four aircraft, plus lozenge decals for the wings, along with a sheet of stripes for the ribs.

Review Author
Pablo Bauleo
Published on
May 25, 2016
Company
Tanmodel
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$79.99

TanModels is a new company from Turkey and I believe this is their first model in 1/48 scale. They choose the RF-84 as the subject for their first boxing, an airplane often overlooked but that has a proud service history with several NATO air forces, which means many options for camouflage and decals.

Before opening the box you will find “Remove before construction” red stickers (keeping the box closed), which make for a fun experience. As soon as you open the box you find yourself looking at several sprues of very cleanly molded parts, with no flash anywhere to be found.