This book is Number 26 of the “Asia War” series. The book is divided into 6 sections, two appendixes, Bibliography and notes. One of the sections is the introduction to Operation Cactus, as well as a small history, and the location of the Maldives Islands.

This introduction section, introduces you to the Sri Lanka’s Tamil insurgents. You are also introduced to the politics, and the economy of the Maldives Islands and the genesis of the Coup.

This metal landing gear set from SAC replaces the gear parts and pitot mast in the new tool Airfix Bristol Beaufort kit. Like its cousins from Bristol, the Blenheim and Beaufighter, the Beaufort has a multipart, complex main gear structure. Airfix has done a good job reproducing this in plastic. The SAC parts are direct copies of those. I compared the assembly of the plastic parts against the white metal SAC pieces. I found the plastic parts had an advantage.

OKB Grigorov specializes in resin, photoetch and turned metal barrel conversions for armor. One of their latest releases is the tracks for the Russian T-34 mod.1940 third variant.

This aftermarket set includes parts in grey resin. As you can see from the pictures, the casting of the parts is pretty good, without any bubbles in the resin and small attachment points.

This set provides you with 4 sections of track and the pictures show the fantastic level of detail of the tracks, both inside and outside sides.

The sections of track are cast flat, so you would have to gently bend them to shape, using the wheels from the kit to get the proper curvature radius. The resin is very thin, so this should be relatively easy. I would suggest to dip the tracks in hot water before bending them around the wheels and dipping them in cold water afterwards to “set” the curvature in.