This kit is a representation of the British Army’s attempt to mount the 25 pdr Field gun on the Valentine chassis to create a self-propelled gun. The need was created by the fluid nature of the North Africa battles. This stopgap design served the British Army till replaced by the American M7 Priest and the Canadian Sexton.

Box Contents

Sprues and decals

The set had very minimal flash, and no ejection pin marks. The few mold lines were easily removed with a sharp blade. There are no decals, and no painting instructions. You will need to copy what you see in the illustration. There are not even any part numbers on the sprue, just a picture on the back of the box with the numbers listed next to the part.

The figures went together without a lot of shaping and filling. The weapons fit the hands and are nicely made.

As noted, there are no painting instructions and the photo on the front is useful as it gives you a sense of what the artist conception is. The photos on the back give you general idea of what the colors are, but my advice is to review your figure references for proper color.

Conclusion – Master Box is becoming the leader in vignettes in a box. The kit is very well done and appears better than my figure painting makes it look.

This is a multimedia kit comprised of 15 sprues, magic tracks, one photo etched fret, decals, and the set of instructions that need to be reviewed very carefully before gluing any parts together. You can build the howitzer as either installed in the vehicle or in the towed format. The vehicle looks very plain without the gun mounted, so that is how I built the model.

Most Dragon models today are a collection of old sprues and new sprues added to create a new kit variant. In this case, Dragon has not done so; only the road wheels, suspension and a couple of pioneer tools are from prior kits, and everything else is new molding.

Folland’s Gnat is aptly named – it’s about the smallest airframe they could wrap around a tandem-seat cockpit, jet engine, and assorted systems to achieve an effective training aircraft. The aircraft was, in fact, selected by the British Aerobatic Team the Red Arrows, who flew it for several years before they adopted the BaE Hawk for their mounts. The Gnat is the outgrowth of Folland’s single-seat Midge (also aptly named) whose final derivative – the HAL Ajeet, flown by the Indian Air Force – became known as a “Sabre-killer” for its success against Pakistani AF F-86s. It was hard to see, fast, nimble, and possessed a potent offensive armament package.

Hull Assembly

We left off last time with a big box of parts just waiting for the magic of modeling to happen to them. I’m happy to report that things are moving along. In this installment, we get to step 36 of 61 in the instructions. It seemed like a good place to report, since the masts and rigging begin in earnest after that, so you won’t have as open a view of the deck. Before any parts are cut lose and glue uncapped, you have to make some decisions about colors. The instructions list seven colors in the Testors range. The photos on the box show a pristine ship with an off white hull representing a lead-based antifouling coating used on war ships. Since this is (according to my story) a cargo ship turned pirate ship, I elected to show the lower hull in off-black or a pitch-based coating.