Eduard continues their Brassin series armament releases for 1/32^nd scale aircraft with Mk. 82 low drag, general purpose bombs which are in use around the world. This set is your basic dumb bomb with a low drag configuration with no guidance systems or retardation fins. This set is comprised of thirty parts; twelve of which are the bomb fronts and the fins. The remaining eighteen are fusing/plugging options. There are three choices- standard fuse and the extended fuse and lastly, the plug installed to the nose to cover the internal parts. Casting is excellent with no pinholes and great definition. There are no seams on the parts to sand.

The Hasegawa Eggplane Series is just plain fun. They assemble quickly, are generally well engineered, and for me provide an immediate platform to practice my budding modeling skills. I “assembled” plastic models as a kid; messy tube-glue seams and hand brushed finishes. I reenter the hobby a few years ago by joining the local IPMS chapter and enrolling in the club’s Adult Building Course. Since, then I have built a few successful projects with the skills learned in the ABC and practice on my Eggplanes.

The F-2 & T-4 “ADTW 60th ANNIVERSARY” box set are my 4th and 5th Eggplanes. The box set is a reissue of previous releases of the F-2 and F-4 with special ADTW 60th Anniversary decals. The 2 kits are packaged separately with individual instruction sheets and a combined decal sheet. I proceed as two individual builds.

Hasegawa continues their fantastic line of small scale airliner aircraft, with this release of the military Boeing KC-767J tanker and E-767 AWACS versions. I have built a number of their other civil airliners, and they are designed to build easily and fairly quickly, by all levels of modeler. I have included pictures of the instruction sheets that cover the history and details of these ex-airliner, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force aircraft.

The two kits come in Hasegawa’s standard sized box, and packaging. Inside are two clear plastic bags, each of which contain the individual model sprues, clear parts, large ballast screws, a stand and poly caps. Loose in the box are two sets of instructions and one good quality decal sheet. Each kit also includes the extra parts specific to the tanker and AWACS.

Aires continues its releases with this excellent set to make the horizontal stabilizers moveable on Trumpeters 1/48^th scale F9F Panther. The set is comprises four perfectly molded parts with two for each side.

Casting is perfect and prep work takes about five minutes. Carefully cut the four parts free with a razor saw and then sand the edges smooth that were cut loose. They are already keyed to fit directly into the kit parts. A little clean up and they fit perfectly. One thing to note too, the set duplicates the kits surface detail very well with all the needed rivets. To finish, glue to the kit and angle the moveable parts to the same angle and paint.

This is a wonderful quick to add set from Aires and will give you kit more visual interest. Highly recommended

My thanks to Aires and IPMS/USA for the chance to review this great set.

The Kit

The kit comes in a fairly thin box that has a nice painting of a Coastal Command Wellington bombing a U boat. The scheme seen on the box is number one of the 6 choices that Italeri gives you. Upon opening the box you find a single bag of 5 gray sprues, and one clear sprue. Inside that bag is also a note saying that the kit was made in the Czech Republic. This kit is the MPM kit reboxed. Along with the sprues come a nice large instruction booklet and a very nice decal sheet by Cartograf. Under all that is an addendum to the instructions telling you step 6 is wrong for this version of the kit, and to use the updated parts for the exhaust. (The hedgehog exhaust of the original MPM kit were replaced by regular tubular exhausts.)