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Review Author
Rob Booth
Published on
August 20, 2016
Company
Master Model
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$5.00

Master – Reality in Miniature has produced a replacement nose pitot for the Airfix BAE Hawk 100 kit. The replacement pitot is a clean drop-in for the kit’s plastic part. The supplied item includes a one piece main pitot tube of turned brass.

A side by side evaluation (see photos) indicates an identical replacement that provides a much more realistic assembly with a significantly improved abuse tolerance. Painting of the main tube will require a quick touch with silver, aluminum or your favorite metalizer after priming, to transform the brass. Check your references.

No other assembly is required. The tube should be attached to the kit fuselage with CA glue. Using care in handling after assembly would seem to be good advice, as the part will be quite fragile, even though it is metal, and the point will pierce human skin easily, given an opportunity. Heed my experience!

Review Author
Rob Booth
Published on
August 20, 2016
Company
Scale Aircraft Conversions
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$12.95

Scale Aircraft Conversions has produced replacement gear for the Italeri/Testors 1/72 scale C-130 family of kits. The white metal replacements are an identical fit replacement for the kit plastic parts. The supplied items include two main gear struts and the nose gear assembly. Some other SAC packages include replacement wheels, as well, but this is not the case here. You will need to use the Italeri/Testors kit wheels for your build.

A side by side evaluation (see photos) indicates an identical replacement that should provide a greater strength assembly with a significantly improved weight capacity and abuse tolerance. However, use some care, because in this scale, even cast metal parts are very fine and fragile. I found it easy to accidentally bend them out of shape with my heavy-handedness.

In some cases where original equipment was left in a natural metal finish, painting may not be necessary. As always, check your reference photos.

Review Author
Pablo Bauleo
Published on
August 19, 2016
Company
Model Art
MSRP
$17.75

Model Art is a Japanese publication that specializes in different aspects of plastic modelling. They have a monthly publication that covers all different genres, but also they publish special issues focusing on a specific topic. In this case how to improve your airplane models.

Be aware that all the text in this special issue is in Japanese. Still the step-by-step pictures are self-explanatory and if you install Google Translate in your smartphone, you can get a machine-based translation for the images captions.

This special issue has tips and techniques being applied in the following airplane models

Review Author
Jim Pearsall
Published on
August 19, 2016
Company
Master Model
Scale
1/144
MSRP
$4.99

Master Model produces beautiful little brass parts for aircraft. Their particular thing is those easily broken and lost parts, pitot tubes and wing guns. I also recently did a review on their gun barrels for the 1/144 Ju-87G Stuka, another set of easily broken parts.

The instructions are pretty basic, so you need to have some modeling experience to figure out what to do. On the other hand, once you’ve done one of these, it becomes pretty clear what the instructions want you to do.

Assembly

I started with Minicraft Spitfire Vc which has been on my shelf for a while. I began by cutting off the kit supplied guns with a sprue cutter. Master makes their guns a little longer so there’s a solid mating surface between the kit wing and the cannon barrel.

Review Author
Chris Gibson
Published on
August 19, 2016
Company
Academy Models
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$45.00

Overview

I won’t go into too much detail on the B17E because its been covered extensively with all the other B17 kits out there. It started the war headed right into the middle of the attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. The B17s were not armed so they had no way to fight back. They had to land because they were low on fuel. Some were destroyed some damaged and a couple escaped with little damage. From that point on the B17 was the only big bomber in the pacific that was used for the first year and did what it could to slow the Japanese onslaught. It’s amazing that they could accomplish anything with the limited men and materials available during the early part of the Pacific war, not to mention the horrible conditions they had to work in.