Chad Richmond
Reviews By Author
U-Boat Type IIB 1943Published: November 2, 2013 The Type IIB U-Boat was used throughout World War II as a coastal patrol boat, and only twenty were made. Since it could not operate very far from its home port and carried very little armament, it was used to train new crews and prepare new Kapitans for their commands. Surprisingly, most of the Type IIB losses were from the Kapitan scuttling the boat. The first Type IIB was launched on June… more |
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A-4 Skyhawk Ejection Seat with Safety BeltsPublished: October 28, 2013 The ejection seat provided in the Trumpeter 1/32nd A-4 kit is very nice, combining both injection plastic and photo etched parts, ten in all. It is certainly passable. It does not compare, however, to the Quickboost seat, which consists of six cast resin parts. The casting is some of the best I have ever seen. The belts are very detailed and the finished seat should paint up nicely. While… more |
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F-4B Phantom II VF-84 “Jolly Rogers” DecalsPublished: October 25, 2013 Right on the heels of Academy’s release of their long-awaited 1/48th scale F-4B, Super Scale comes out with a great sheet depicting the ever-popular Jolly Rogers markings. Sadly, there is only one set of markings on the sheet and there are no stencils. The aircraft depicted is BuNo 151506, which was the CAG’s aircraft while on the USS Independence in 1965. Though having nothing to do with the… more |
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Messerschmitt Bf-110 Stencil DecalsPublished: April 24, 2013 Eduard has given us some really great 1/72 Bf-110’s in the last few months, and now they have given us the stencils for them. Get out your Optivisor or your favorite magnifier, because you will need it. They are tiny! At first, I thought there were enough stencils for four aircraft, but that is only partially true. There are only enough for two aircraft in some cases, enough for three in some… more |
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A-6 Intruder Wing Fold SetPublished: January 17, 2013 Along with several other photo etch sets made for detailing the Kinetic EA-6B and A-6E kits, Eduard offers this wing fold enhancement. Though the kit detail of the wing fold is adequate, this set definitely fine tunes the whole mechanism and lends a lot of detail. All together, there are 66 pieces of photo etch detail, all of which must be folded at least once, most twice. Removal of four tabs… more |
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MiG-21 Czech Stencil DecalsPublished: January 16, 2013 Eduard has given us several MiG-21 offerings, which allows us to build just about any MiG-21 in any country’s service. Right after their release of their MiG-21 in Czechoslovak service, they released this decal sheet that is just stencils in Czech. And there are a bunch of them. I started to count them, but gave up. There are 132 different stencils, and there are anywhere from two to… more |
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Messerschmitt Bf-109E-4 DecalsPublished: January 14, 2013 Eduard has turned out an excellent 1/48th scale Bf-109E-4 kit for us that has sparked a new interest in one of the most modeled aircraft ever. But, who can ever have enough 109’s? Even though you get markings for five separate aircraft in the Profipack kit, Eduard has produced a decal sheet with another five aircraft for us to choose from. The decals are printed by Eduard in the… more |
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Albatross D.III/IV Decals, Part 1Published: January 14, 2013 Dust off all those Eduard Albatross DV and DVa kits that you have, because Lifelike has released two new decal sheets with new markings not previously produced. And, one is very colorful, in typical Bavarian fashion. The title says DIII, but the markings included on the sheets are for three DV’s and one DVa. With each of the aircraft views is a history of the aircraft and its pilot and various… more |
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Albatros D.V/D.Va At War, Volume 2Published: July 16, 2012 I though long ago that I had seen just about every picture of the World War I Albatros D.V and D.Va. Then Windsock comes along and publishes another Datafile that is jam packed with photos that I have not seen before and of aircraft markings that were new to me. This Datafile includes black and white photos taken during and after WWI and pictures of the two flyable aircraft built by The… more |
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MiG-21 MF Interior LatePublished: May 10, 2012 Whenever you open the box for this set, there are so many parts that you feel like you’re opening a complete resin kit. Altogether, there are 33 resin parts, two photo etch sheets and a clear acetate sheet. It takes six 8” x 6” instruction sheets to show how to put it all together. These instructions appear to be a big improvement over past instruction sheets, because they are less confusing… more |