History

The Hasegawa 1/72 Ki-61 dates back to the early 1970s and is still a nice kit, but basic. CMK has come out with some detail sets to spice up these old kits.

What You Get

4 crisply molded resin parts along with a 9 X 3.5 folded sheet of instructions. These parts are very fragile so please be careful when handling them.

Construction

The first thing you need to do is remove the flaps from kit part B10 and thin the undersides of the corresponding areas of parts B11 & 12. This 2nd part is where I totally messed this up due to my not paying attention. I removed the areas totally and this made it almost impossible to build. I managed to get these on and make them look halfway decent, but it could have and should have been better. With the exception of my mistake, these went on pretty easy and look very nice.

Introduction

The U.S. Army RU-8D Seminole (not to be confused with the Piper light twin of the same name) was based on the Beechcraft Model 50 Twin Bonanza, first flown in 1952. The Army version modeled in this kit takes a civilian aircraft, strips the luxury interior out and loads the inside with radio receivers and festoons the exterior with antennas to fulfill the signal intelligence mission. Used extensively over Vietnam, the Seminole crew would home in on enemy radio transmissions with the goal of pinpointing the position of those units. These underappreciated units provided critical intelligence to units on the ground. I was pleased to see a model company honoring this often lonely and forgotten mission with this model.

The Spitfire, never has there been such an iconic fighter for a country than the British thoroughbred. Not to be overlooked Fündekals has done up a new sheet on this fighter that covers no less than TWELVE Spitfires from the Mk.I to the Mk.XVIe.

The decals come in a large ziplock type bag. They are on two decal sheets. One is the individual aircraft and fuselage markings and the other has the wing roundels. They are printed by B.O.A. The decals are world class with perfect register, good color saturation, thin and a joy to work with.

Bill Yenne has written more than three-dozen books on historical topics, as well as several novels. He has contributed to encyclopedias of both world wars, and has been featured in documentaries on the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, the Smithsonian Channel, and ARD German Television. The Wall Street Journal notes that Yenne writes "with a cinematic vividness," and Gen. Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, called Yenne's recent biography of Alexander the Great, the "best yet." Yenne's books have been included in Amazon's "100 Best Books of the Year."

IPMS/USA thanks the Eduard team once again for sending us this simple, excellent set. And thanks to Phil and John for obtaining the sets for the team…

An extremely simple, but useful upgrade of any kit needing this pod. Consisting of a resin main body, a resin seeker head, and two different tail vent plates in Photoetch, I had this one knocked out in a couple of hours. First is minor prep; removal of the seeker head was simple, and the same for the main pod body. Careful use of thin superglue ensured the end plate stayed in place, and the seeker head just snaps into place.