One item that is the curse of all figure painters is that molded insignias and badges on the figures are way out of scale. They are usually raised and if in scale, they would stick out about an inch or more. Now, Authentic Decals has produced a set of decals for modern US soldiers with insignia, rank and regiment badges. With this release one would think that their prayers were answered. Unfortunately they were not with this set.

I realize that the modern US soldier does not have the colorful badges and insignia that were seen in WW II, but these are all monochromatic. Not only that, they are too small for 1/35 scale. I would also note that the regiment badges seem to be out of register.

There is only one set of each rank so if you screw up one, you will have to change the rank of the figure. The decals are so small that it is hard to distinguish one from another. They are numbered on the decal sheet, but there is no other reference as to which one is which.

Editor's note: The following review was purchased independently and submitted for review by the author. Should you have an interest in the product you will need to purchase directly, as noted in the review.

The history of this gun goes back as far as 1980. The Israeli’s had these mounted in M113 series vehicles as well as several wheeled styles. For one reason or another it never really took off. However, the Chilean army purchased several upgrade packages for their aging M-50s (supplied by Israel) and their M-24s. These guns and Fire Control packages were relatively cheap compared to other offers and had an incredible amount of hitting power for the size of the gun.

Once again Dragon has taken a previously released armor kit and has added Zimmerit, re-releasing it as a new kit. This is a good thing if you don’t feel you want to try to apply the Zimmerit using various types of putties and tools. To achieve this Dragon provides us with 26 plastic sprues of varying sizes. Two Brummbar sprues, four STUG III G sprues and only a few specifically for the STUG IV, most of the sprues are for the Panzer IV. Total part count comes to 751 parts; the number of unused parts is 207 leaving 544 parts to build the model. Several sprues have the same letter; Dragon gets around this by having one letter in black and the second same letter in blue. I mark the outside of the bags to make it easy to find the right sprue when I need it.