Jack Wade

IPMS Number
45604

Reviews By Author

Box Art

De Havilland Sea Venom FAW.21

Published:
Company: Cyber-Hobby

This new injection molded plastic kit is a great example of modern engineering that exhibits fine surface detail and great fit of parts. It is a builder’s kit, to be sure, and it was indeed a pleasure to build. The design of the parts is excellent and thoughtful allowing easy construction and clean up for a smooth finish. For example, the sprue attachment points are on the inner mating surface of many of the major components which makes cleaning up these areas as easy as it can be. Design features allow the wings to be posed folded, flaps posed up or down, the tail hook posed up or down and there are separate parts for posing the landing gear in the retracted or extended position (although this is not addressed in any way in the instructions). Slide molded parts provide for hollow… more

Kitset packaging

BAe Lightning Ejection Seat w/ Safety Belts

Published:
Company: Quickboost

This is a simple replacement part that is substantially more detailed than the kit part. It is molded perfectly with no flash or bubbles to be seen. The pull handle is provided as a separate part on a common casting block with the seat. The parts must be separated from the casting block with a saw and the pull handles glued in the appropriate location for which a diagram is provided.

Pictured here with the Quickboost example are the kit seat and an example from the now out of production Cutting Edge offering for comparison. Obviously the difference is with the details including additional “plumbing” and safety belts. The Quickboost example is considerably more “strappy” than the older Cutting Edge product and any preference for one or the other may well be a matter of personal… more

Kitsets packaging

F-8 Crusader Flaps and F-8 Crusader Slats

Published:
Company: Quickboost

  • QB 72 269 (flaps) $4.88
  • QB 72 270 (slats) $3.70

These two sets allow the Academy F-8 kit to be displayed with the flaps and slats dropped. The Academy Crusader is a very nifty kit - one of their best. The kit offers the option of having the variable incidence wing in the raised position, but the flaps are fixed in the up position and the slats, although separate parts, are not designed to be positioned downward either. Unless you don’t mind bending the accuracy rules, you can not pose the wing in the up position because the flaps and slats automatically dropped when the wing was in the raised position on the real thing. To maintain accuracy, the modeler wishing to display the wing in the raised position needs to resort to modifying the kit parts. These… more

Front cover

Modellers Datafile 17 The BAe RAF Harrier

Published:
Book Author(s): Andy Evans
Company: SAM Publications

This is another fine publication in this now well established series. This reviewer has collected several volumes in the series and this issue is indeed an improvement over earlier volumes in the series and is simply superb. Whereas earlier titles devoted a number of pages to obscure sometimes one-off experimental variants of the subject aircraft type, the more recent volumes have skipped the pedantic overview of the type’s development in favor of more thorough coverage of standard in-service variants including detailed walk around photos and operational history. Another welcome improvement is that this volume is printed in full color.

The soft cover book consists of 128 pages and covers the type in RAF service from the GR.1 to GR.9 as well as some brief coverage of development… more

Parts in kitset

Harrier GR.5/7 Exhaust Nozzles

Published:
Company: Aires Hobby Models

This is a superb set of replacement nozzles for the very crude kit parts provided by Hasegawa. The Aires Hobby Models parts are drop fit replacements and are quite easy to use. Other than cutting them off the casting blocks (a five minute task), they require no more effort than the kit parts to use. The photos show the kit parts and their Aires replacement side by side and truly speak for themselves. The interiors have depth that is non-existent on the kit parts and the edges are really thin and sharp. The detail is super on the replacement parts. Another advantage over the kit parts is that they are one piece whereas the nozzles provided in the kit are in two halves which leaves a seam for cleaning; really not a good thing when they are to be finished with a metal color. Using this… more

Kitsets packaging

Westland Lynx BERP Rotor Blades; Westland Lynx Late Version Undercarriage

Published:
Company: Pavla Models

Editor's note: P/N U72-110 = $7.50; P/N U72-109 = $5.50

It was with great anticipation that I awaited the release of the Hobbyboss 1/72 Westland Lynx HAS.3. When it hit the street, I was not surprised to learn that it was a nice kit with some curious accuracy issues as this seems to be typical for this manufacturer. Pavla has addressed two of the major hiccups with these two resin sets and I jumped at the chance to incorporate them in my build for this review.

The first shortcoming addressed by the two sets reviewed here is the lack of BERP rotor blades applicable to this variant. The kit includes the older straight style on a separate sprue just for the rotor blades and this is particularly frustrating as other boxings of this kit have the correct BERP rotor blades – a… more

Kitset packaging

Cockpit set for Jaguar GR.1

Published:
Company: Pavla Models

The cockpit set comes in four cream colored pieces – tub, seat, stick and panel/coaming. The parts are nicely detailed and well-cast, if only a tad rough on the surface. The texture was not an issue with parts this small and I did nothing special to prepare the parts for painting, including skipping the washing stage often recommended. The parts were prepared simply by cutting them from their casting blocks.

This set is intended for the Italeri kit, but I prefer the Hasegawa kit and adapted the set for use in it instead. Given the simplicity of the set, I would imagine that using it in either kit is a fairly similar proposition. The Hasegawa kit does incorporate the nose gear well into the bottom of the cockpit tub so it had to be sawed off and incorporated into the conversion.… more

Issue cover

Air Modeller #29, April/May 2010

Published:
Company: Air Modeller

This publication is edited in the UK and is dedicated to airplane models, as the title implies. It is 65 pages and printed in full color. There are 65 pages in an issue, this one in particular having 6 pages devoted to product reviews and the remaining 59 dedicated to the 7 outstanding models featured in the issue. It is printed on high quality heavy weight paper with a glossy finish. The cover is on heavier bond paper and should hold up well with repeated viewing.

This issue features the following builds:

  • 1/32 Spitfire PR.IX
  • 1/48 Halifax B.Mk.II
  • 1/48 Henschel Hs 126
  • 1/72 Jaguar T.4
  • 1/72 Short Sterling Mk.I
  • 1/72 RF-4E
  • 1/48 P-40 Mk.IA

All of the builds featured here are absolutely top notch… more