Ian White was born in the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1947 and educated at secondary schools in Rotherham and later in Ilford, Essex. He joined the Post Office Engineering Department in August 1963 as an apprentice and later served as a technician in the City of London. In 1973, on promotion to engineer, he was appointed to the Post Office’s Air Defense Group in London to provide landline and ground to air communications for the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK, Germany and Cyprus. In April 1984 he joined the Company’s Defense Sales Organization as a Senior Systems Engineer and later as an engineering manager. The final three years were spent as a liaison officer within the defense and law enforcement community. Ian retired in May 2000, following which he attended Anglia Polytechnic University (now Anglia Ruskin University), Cambridge, as an undergraduate history student. In 2003 he was awarded an honours degree in Modern European History.

I have been interested in the SBD Dauntless for as long as I have been modeling. In these 20+ years, I have collected any book on my favorite aircraft as I could grab up. For as long as I have been modeling, I have also come to appreciate David Doyle’s excellent reference books on all matters of military subjects and they have become a go-to source whenever I wanted to learn more. The fact that his expertise could be married to the Slow but Deadly in the form of a new book on this truly significant dive bomber makes me truly happy. The fact that the book contains so many photos I have never seen makes things even that much better.

This set is designed to be used on Eduard’s MiG-21MF “Fighter-Bomber” kit that was released by Eduard last fall. The set provides full color replacements for the cockpit walls, consoles, canopy rails, canopy and the instrument panel. It also includes a several pieces for the ejection seat harness, the “Odd Rods” IFF antennas and static dischargers.

Italeri have re-released this 1991 kit with new decals the decal options include three airlines - Air UK (1985) Canyon Eagle Airlines 1998 and Schreiner Airways (1966).

The twin-engine Fokker F-27 was designed during the fifties by the Dutch Aircraft Manufacturer to provide a successor to the old DC-3 that were still in service since the second world war. It was a great commercial success for airlines and military use.

In the box is:

• 4 x white sprues (one varies from the illustration in the instructions)
• 1 clear sprue
• 1 large decal sheet
• 1 instruction booklet

The kit consists of 4 main sprues, very well molded with very little flash but a few large ejector pin marks on some parts. I decided that I would build the Air UK aircraft as I worked with Air UK in the past on a few projects interior projects.

This set includes two complete sets of landing gear for Eduard’s recent Spitfire Mk. IXe and Mk. XVI kits. Each set is comprised of 5 pieces: two main struts, two scissor links, and a tailwheel with the strut. The parts are drop-in replacements for the kit parts.

As the struts are small and space around them on the casting tree is pretty tight, the first thing I did was to use a razor saw to separate the parts from the casting tree. To keep myself from getting confused, I removed one set only so that I could match the parts up with the ones left on the casting tree and keep left and right straight.