Scale Aircraft Conversions has produced replacement gear for the Italeri/Testors 1/72 scale C-130 family of kits. The white metal replacements are an identical fit replacement for the kit plastic parts. The supplied items include two main gear struts and the nose gear assembly. Some other SAC packages include replacement wheels, as well, but this is not the case here. You will need to use the Italeri/Testors kit wheels for your build.

A side by side evaluation (see photos) indicates an identical replacement that should provide a greater strength assembly with a significantly improved weight capacity and abuse tolerance. However, use some care, because in this scale, even cast metal parts are very fine and fragile. I found it easy to accidentally bend them out of shape with my heavy-handedness.

In some cases where original equipment was left in a natural metal finish, painting may not be necessary. As always, check your reference photos.

Master Model produces beautiful little brass parts for aircraft. Their particular thing is those easily broken and lost parts, pitot tubes and wing guns. I also recently did a review on their gun barrels for the 1/144 Ju-87G Stuka, another set of easily broken parts.

The instructions are pretty basic, so you need to have some modeling experience to figure out what to do. On the other hand, once you’ve done one of these, it becomes pretty clear what the instructions want you to do.

Assembly

I started with Minicraft Spitfire Vc which has been on my shelf for a while. I began by cutting off the kit supplied guns with a sprue cutter. Master makes their guns a little longer so there’s a solid mating surface between the kit wing and the cannon barrel.

Thank you to Furball Aero-Design for extending this decal series. I am certain that F-14 fans will be thrilled with this set! Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for letting me review them, I am very appreciative of the chance to contribute back to the scale-modeling community.

If you enjoyed the movie "Flight of the Intruder" that was released back in 1991 (and now I feel old), AOA Decals now provides you with the ability to replicate the aircraft flown by the Squadron Commanding Officer, or by the main character. Commander Frank "Dooke" Camparelli (as played by Danny Glover) along with Bombardier Navigator Lt. Carl "Hero" Aldana flew in Devil 501 while Lt. Jake "Cool Hand" Grafton (played by Brad Johnson) flew Devil 505 with BN Lt. Morgan "Morg" McPherson (played by Christopher Rich), and later LCDR Virgil "Tiger" Cole (played by Willem Dafoe). Although the movie was not critically acclaimed, and did not make enough at the box office to offset the production costs, it remains an interesting movie to some of us, and it has plenty of scenes starring the A-6 Intruder.

Res-Im (Resin Improvement) is a Czech company that specialized in resin detail sets, mainly in the 1/48 and 1/72 scales.

This set is for the Hawker Hurricane Mk.I gun bay, for the 4 guns wing. Inside a sturdy box you get a total of 18 resin pours for a two full gun bays –starboard and port wings-. The parts are extremely delicate and in some cases there is a very thin resin layer covering a hole or an opening that might need to be cleaned with a sharp blade before installation.

The pours are in a light grey-green resin and the resin itself is a tad brittle. I accidentally broke off a very thin part from the pouring slab (but the part itself was undamaged). My pictures don’t show repeated/duplicates resin pours.