Airscale Decals is evidently new, at least within the last year, and their website shows plans for numerous waterslide decals of instrument dials and panels for various 24th and 32nd scale aircraft, Allied and Luftwaffe. I note that placards and data plates are scheduled for future release. I don't do 24th scale, but happened to have a couple Hurricanes around, well, because one can never have enough Hurricanes.

Introduction

The author, John Weal, has written a number of books on the wartime career of the Focke Wulf FW-190 and its pilots, and this book fills a gap that needed to be filled, that of the Defense of the Reich units that operated mainly over Germany from mid-1942 until the end of the war. The book mainly covers the activities of JG 1, JG 2, JG 4, JG 26, JG 76, and JG 301, and is confined primarily to the radial engine variants, from FW-190A-4 through FW-190A-8. These units operated primarily against American 8^th Air Force bomber formations, and they were highly successful until the introduction of the long range P-47’s and P-51’s, which tipped the balance in favor of the Americans.

The Maschinen Krieger universe is a SciFi series created in the 1980’s by Kow Yokoyama and ran as a series of stories in Japanese Hobby Magazine Hobby Japan. Many of the creations are permutations of WW I and WW II tanks and aircraft upgraded and all started with powered armored suits. In 2009, Hasegawa received the license for the kits and entered the market with the Falke, Lunadiver Stingray and now the P.K.H. 103 Nutcracker, a hover tank. After building the Lunadiver Stingray, when this came up for review, I wanted to add to the collection I am building.

Inside the box are 8 tan sprues and an upper and lower hull for the Nutcracker. Molding is superb with fines detail. Also included are 5 sprues to build two of the powered suits, a Gustav and Melusine. Finishing out the box is a large decal sheet and painting guide detailing the 5 options available for the tank. More painting instructions are also on the box bottom.