This second book in the new Combat Edge series from SAM Publications deals with the US Navy and Marine Corps EA-6B Prowler. The book has a beautiful cover shot in glossy relief of a Prowler coming right at you. The book covers the history and development of the Prowler, its operational history as well as a walk around and beautiful color profiles. Lastly, there are three unbelievable builds of the Prowler. More on these later.

The chapters included in the book are:

Eduard has released a full line of Hellcats in 1/48 scale, covering from the early -3, to the late -5, including night fighter versions and even Royal Navy service markings. This particular boxing is the Weekend edition of the -5(N), with neither mask nor photoetch, but with two options for decals and a small number of resin parts to make the conversion to “night fighter”.

When I opened the box I found a total of 5 sprues (one clear) and 3 small resin casting for details like radio-altimeter, exhausts, radar housing for the starboard wing and cannons with nicely casted flash dampers. FYI: the nightfighter version of the Hellcat was capable of carrying a 20 mm cannon.

A note on the sprues: one of them –the fuselage one- was molded in tan, while the rest of the sprues were molded in blue-gray. And there were two full engine cowlings, but no indication of the second cowling in the instructions. I was a bit puzzled by the different plastic colors and two cowlings.

Master Model of Poland produces small brass parts for detailing models, be they aircraft or ships. They have parts for aircraft in 1/32, 1/35, 1/48, 1/72, and 1/144, mostly pitot tubes, refueling probes, and gun barrels.

The pitot part is a very fine piece of brass. The piece is much finer than the kit part.

I didn’t have a 1/144 Hunter on the shelf, so this review required that I build the Revell Hunter. As long as I’m building it, I may as well do it as part of my “Suez 1956” project. That’s why the Hunter has those red and yellow stripes, negating any camouflage effect.

Pitot Installation

Once the kit was almost finished, I got out the Master Model pitot and took the pictures. It was an easy installation. Revell gives you a little notch at the wing tip, and the CA provides a bit of filler. I then painted the pitot silver. No drilling, just a bit of CA and accelerator.

Overall Evaluation

Highly recommended.

With the recent releases of the special edition F-104 kits from Eduard in 1/48 using Hasegawa plastic, Eduard has released the F-104 C2 ejection seat as a separate kit. The Lockheed C2 ejection seat was the most commonly used ejection seat for the F-104 in US service. It is a downward firing rocket propelled ejection seat.

This seat set is very simple. It contains the main seat frame, two seat options, rails, a small photo etch set and a small decal set. As this is a drop in replacement seat for the kit seat the assembly is very straight forward. Everything in the kit replaces the equivalently parts in the F-104 kit. The first step in the assembly is to remove the three large resin parts from the casting blocks, use a razor saw for this step. If you are careful minimal clean will be needed. After clean up, wash the parts to remove the mold release agent that is often on resin parts.

With the recent releases of the special edition F-104 kits from Eduard in 1/48 using Hasegawa plastic, Eduard has released the F-104 MB. 7 ejection seat as a separate kit. The Martin-Baker Mk. Q7(A) ejection seat was a replacement ejection seat for the F-104 in European service. It replaced the original downward firing seats with the newer upward firing design. The reason for this change is that in foreign service the role of the F-104 was expanded and in low altitude flight with heavy wing loads there was a very high rate of failure with the original downward firing seats.