History

(From the Hasegawa site) On December 7th, 1941, Japanese fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers devastated the US fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor. Militarily, it was a resounding success. Most of America's battleship force was either burning or on the bottom and the Japanese strike force was barely bloodied. On December 8th, Roosevelt gave his speech and asked for a declaration of war. An entire nation woke up on the 9th and went to war by the millions. Now, 75 years since the day, Hasegawa brings you a three-kit set of aircraft from the IJN Carrier Akagi.

The F-14 Tomcat is well known as a formidable, and versatile Fighter aircraft. It served faithfully, and saw action from 1974, until its retirement from the US Navy following its last deployment in 2006. Iran is the only other operator of the F14 Tomcat and is still in service.

In this package are two complete kits, and include decals for VF-84 Jolly Rogers aboard USS Nimitz in 1978, and VFA-103 Jolly Rogers aboard USS John F. Kennedy in 2004.

The large sturdy box features two nice color photos of each aircraft, and I referred to them several times while building and painting. All the grey plastic sprues for one aircraft and a photo etch fret are contained in one plastic bag. The clear parts are bagged separately. The main canopy in both bags had come loose, but no damage was found. Two squadron patches are included. These look fantastic displayed next to the finished models.

Eduard has released a boxing of the very good 1/48 Hasegawa Mc. 202, which is enhanced by the addition of two photo-etch frets (one pre-painted), resin parts and a paint mask. Not only that, but you get Cartograf-printed decals with markings for 6 colorful Folgores. It is an amazing offering.

Like most airplane model construction starts with the cockpit and with two photoetch-frets it means you are going to have quite the detailed “front office”. Some plastic parts need to be modified, removed or replaced, including parts of the cockpit floor, cockpit sides and instrument panel.

Note that on the left cockpit side there is a wheel –mounted on top of PE box. If mounted as indicated in the instructions -or at least on where I think the instructions indicate it- there is interference of the wheel and the seat. I really don’t know what the problem was if it was the instructions or me.

Here’s another of those handy little add-ons to save a model from the “shelf of not quite right models”. In this case it’s a replacement for that pitot tube which got broken off (or was never there) on a current project or a long-finished model.

I recently reviewed Master’s pitot for a 1/144 F-104 which didn’t have a pitot tube. This one is for a 1/144 F-105 where I had manufactured a pitot, but it wasn’t quite right. The pitot I manufactured was from a straight pin, and it was too short and too thick. The Master Model part took care of this.

I used a pair of small pliers to pull the old pitot out of the nose of the F-105. This left a hole ready to accept the new part, except the new part was much smaller than the old one. I filled the hole with gel-type CA, let it set for a couple of minutes, then put the new pitot in place. This was fine, except the nose cone didn’t match up with the new part. I used white glue as a sort of filler to get the parts to match up.

Warpaint’s latest is their standard A4 format softbound publication in 52 pages (including covers) on the Westland Scout and Wasp helicopters. The book is split into two, with the first half dedicated to the Westland Scout and the second to the Westland Wasp. I counted 122 color photographs and 19 black and white pictures, along with 32 of Richard J. Caruana’s color profiles. Richard J. Caruana also contributes the four 1/48 line drawings.