The Eduard P-51Ds are excellence in plastic. They are beautiful plastic kits, but the landing gear is a little fragile. Enter Kazan Model Dynamics, with their HybridCAST sets. What does HybridCAST mean? There is an aluminum rod surrounded by resin pieces. This gives you added strength along with the superior details offered by resin.

Packaged in a top-opening stiff card stock box with plenty of foam to protect the parts, the instructions are printed on a single side sheet. This set has 20 resin pieces, but what sets these apart is the inclusion of aluminum tubing INSIDE the strength-critical parts such as the landing gear struts and the actuator rods.

DXM Double Excellent Model) Is a hobby company out of Taiwan and has been making decals for a while. They have now branched out into conversions also to augment their decals. This set is a conversion of the Tamiya F-14D kit inot an F-14B kit and includes two options, early or late and these sets can also be bought with decals which contain a couple options each. You can get the conversion by itself or with a specific set of decals and they are listed below:

• DXM-S0002- F-14B Conversion
• DXM-S0002P1- F-14B Conversion with VF-32 Fighting Swordsmen Decals
• DXM-S0002P2- F-14B Conversion with VF-143 Pukin’ Dogs
• DXM-S0002P3- F-14B Conversion with VF-11 Red Rippers
• DXM-S0002P4- F-14B Conversion with VF-101 Grim Reapers

For this review, we will use the VF-143 set. The conversion involves the following:

Special Hobby has provided this beautiful 2024 release of the First French Supersonic fighe the SMB2 Super Mystere, in 1/72 scale model.

• Nine grey sprues
• One clear sprue
• Three resin parts
• Two decal sheets
• One instruction guide

The detailed quality is excellent in every way with this kit; crisp and detailed molding. The kit can be built in two versions: one the French version and there other the IAI Sa’ar Honduran version. You need to decide which version before you start the building. I when with the version A – French Air Force May 1961.

The assembly is quick and easy.

The assembly starts with the engine and jet pipes in stage 1 and 2. There are several ejection pin marks that need cleaning up.

The cockpit is next at stage1 and 2 this was straight forward just watch for part C39 as it is a tight fit.

The stages 5 and 6 are easy.

MMP was founded in 1996 by Roger Wallsgrove, to publish "Mushroom Model Magazine". This quarterly modelling magazine was developed from "Mushroom Monthly”, a club newsletter which ran from 1985 to 1995, achieving a world-wide reputation for quality articles, fearless and honest reviews, and a great sense of humor. From 1997 the magazine was produced in collaboration with Robert Peczkowski and Artur Juszczak (Stratus), which meant a big leap in print quality and design. MMP expanded into book publication in 1999 with Stratus, and since then they have built up a list of hard cover and soft cover titles on aircraft and aviation, naval, military vehicles, and military history. Stratus / MMPBooks are distributed in North America by Casemate Publications. Check out their Facebook page for additional information. This English language book, Hungarian Bomber Colours 1927-1945 Vol. 1. is authored by Dénes Bernád and György Punka.

The Westland Wessex was a British license-built version of the Sikorsky H-34 and in it’s HAS.3 anti-submarine version, was a capable hunter/killer and saw combat in the Falklands War, where one machine nicknamed ‘Humphrey’ seriously damaged the Argentine submarine Santa Fe, which subsequently had to be scuttled, and also rescued SAS troops from a glacier in bad weather after their helicopters had crashed.

Italeri’s Wessex HAS.3 kit was released in 2013 and is a very nice kit, though it has a few issues and is lacking finesse in some areas. One such area is the mesh cover for the gearbox compartment. This compartment sits atop the Wessex’s distinctive ‘humpback,’ just under the rotor and rotor head. Quickboost labels this as an ‘engine grille,’ though as the Wessex’s engines are housed in the nose, this seems a little unlikely!