Eduard continues their upgrades to existing kits by giving the treatment to Hasegawa’s 1/48^th scale F/A-18E and calling it Super Bug! Inside the box, you get the wonderful Hasegawa F/A-18E Sprues which are excellent with fine panel lines, no flash and good detail. To give it the updates treatment, Eduard adds Brassin details including a resin seat and tires; a colorized PE fret is added with parts to upgrade the cockpit and an Eduard Mask set for the kit. To top this off, a superb decal sheet is included with colorful markings for the following:

Based out of Austria, Harpia Publishing specializes in the more esoteric aspects of military aviation, and boasts some of the most knowledgeable authors in their respective fields. The result is a catalog of books with very detailed accounts of Egyptian, Iranian, Iraqi, Syrian, Asian, and various African air forces.

Brengen produces a wide range of unique resin, photo-etch (PE) accessories and full kits in 1/32, 1/48, 1/72 and 1/144. These nacelles were previously produced by Attack Squadron (Arma Hobby) and that product line was sold to Brengen which now offers the C-130 product line many are familiar with.

This resin set comes in a sturdy cardboard box containing a left and right forward section of the landing gear sponson. Each of the two castings with crisp mold lines along with substantial cast block attached which are easily removed. The cut location was a little hard to determine at first but after cutting right at the thick of the cast block, it was obvious that it needed to be trimmed to the first cast line.

The North American B-25 Mitchell was one of the best Allied twin-engine medium bombers of WW II. It was dependable, simple to service and easy to fly. It was more angular looking than many of its contemporaries, but the Mitchell’s advantages made it preferable in most theatres.

Many of the B-25 crews in Italy, Africa and the Far East showed their love for their planes by decorating them with great markings. The noses of the solid-nose Mitchells were painted to resemble dragons, bats, tigers, sharks etc. The glass-nose Mitchells seemed to collect lots of pin-ups.

Lifelike Decals of Japan have recently issued four sheets of decals covering various B-25s. I chose to review part 3 of this group because I had a Hasegawa B-25J in my stash that I wanted to add to my collection.

This sheet contains markings for four interesting B-25s. They are;

In Part 2 of my build of Zoukei-Mura’s HS-129B-2, we got the wings and horizontal stabs on and prepped the kit for paint. I primed the plane and checked for flaws and (not surprisingly) there were several. I had to work on the cannon doors and a little bottom seam work. A quick sanding another round of primer and I wanted to give the instructions a last go over. Reviewing the detailed instructions, I see a few parts I needed to add- the flaps and ailerons. I added those and moved on to paint.

For the color scheme, there are markings provided for one plane: