Fundekals is a newer company but the people behind them have been around the modeling scene for years. And they have a new business model. They are aware of the cost of decals and the current trend to have dozens of markings. They have decided on (mostly) one set of markings per sheet and a onetime printing and generally will not include things like national markings. And they do not include the instructions sheets which are downloadable from their web site in PDF form. And, that’s a good thing which you will see in a minute.

The subject of this sheet is the Mosquito PR.IV which had regular flights between Scotland and Stockholm between 1943 and 1945. This was a dangerous flight as it went over occupied Norway. The British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) started running these flights with a single modified Mosquito eventually acquiring six more. This decals sheet represents the first plane, G-AGFV, during its entire career.

Many thanks to Mr. Ross MacMillan of Scale Aircraft Conversions and the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to try this neat substitute and replacement set for the Kitty Hawk UH-1D. I am pleased to report on another sweet add-on and upgrade from this company. The target kit has excellent detail and complexity, with a bit of a tendency to be a tail sitter. The addition of heavier metal skid parts eliminates the tendency of the model to “sit back”.

The 6 white-metal parts arrived in a blister pack, backed by the distinctive SAC company logo. The weight of the parts is very noticeable. Some parts are on sprues and all are easily cleaned up for painting. The parts require very little buffing, cleanup and polishing. Some barely-noticeable seams readily retreat at the advance of a #11 blade! My incautious elbow on the bench slightly bent and twisted the parts in the package. See the package image for the scene of the accident.

Eduard Models has been releasing “Overtrees” and “Overlept” versions of their main boxings “Profipack” and “Weekend”. Let me cover the differences among the boxing types:

• Profipack boxing includes plastic parts, masks, pre-painted photoetch pieces, instructions and a decal sheet with typically 4 to 6 different marking options. Often a Profipack release has an orange band on top of the art cover.
• Weekend boxing includes plastic parts, instructions and a decal sheet with 1 (or more recently 2) marking options, but no masks, nor photoetch.
• Overtrees: you get onlyplastic parts. No decals, no photo-etch, no masks, not even instructions. The intention of this boxings is to offer a very affordable “extra” model to apply the un-used marking options of the nice decal sheet from the Profipack boxing.

Bf 109F-4 PE-set 1/48

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.