In 2014, the 482 Fighter Wing painted up one of its F-16C’s to commemorate its 25th anniversary. The jet was decorated with a mako shark motif including a shark mouth on the intake, a shark head on the forward fuselage and a shark fin on the vertical tail. The motif was created by modifying the standard F-16 scheme to incorporate the shark design.

SAC has recently issued a replacement cast white metal gear set for the new beautiful and enormous Kitty Hawk OV-10D in 1/32nd scale. Kitty Hawk will also be issuing this kit in an OV-10A/C version soon and this gear should work well for that kit as well.

Big Note Here: This is not an issue with the SAC gear but with the Kitty Hawk OV-10D. Kitty Hawk calls for the numbers on their instructions that don’t exist on the sprue runners. There is no “G” sprue. These parts actually exist on runner “J”. For me I found it easiest to just mark runner “J” to “G”. Disaster averted. I will be using the Kitty Hawk instruction parts numbers to identify the corresponding SAC parts.

There can’t be a modeler on the planet who doesn’t know the brand name Eduard, from the Czech Republic. They launched into the business of providing Photo Etched brass detail parts decades ago, and have expanded into injection molded plastic kits, resin detail parts, cloth seat belt sets, and canopy masks, and I am sure a couple of other lines, and seem to cover every scale, and every model subject out there. This review covers two products designed to be used with the Airfix English Electric Lightning F.2A in 1/72nd scale, an extremely nice kit that has recently been released.

Centenary Datafile 168 is the first in a set of Datafiles that cover the Hannover CI.II/CI.IV/CI.IIIA series of aircraft. The history of the “Hawa” is presented in this issue, supplemented with 50+ period photos and six pages of technical drawings in 1/72nd and 1/48th by Mick Davis.

Included within is a discussion on the very unique and interesting geometry of the “Hawa” as well as some historical documentation in the form of the Aeronautical Engineering report on 13199/18 including notes and sketches. Modelers will find the entire publication filled with excellent detail resources, but the AE report includes some awesome sketches and drawing which can assist the modeler in adding detail to a model.

Some excellent full color artwork by Ronny Bar are presented on the back cover, both inside and out, and on the inside front cover.

Eduard has released a series of WWII-era seatbelts in the “Superfabric” series. This review covers the following item:

• Seatbelts USN WWII green SUPERFABRIC, Catalogue No: 49086, MSRP: $7.95

The Superfabric seatbelts are made of some sort of “rubber-like” material. They have volume -i.e, they are not flat like decals- and they have a little bit of texture like if it they were made of ‘fabric’ (pun intended).

From what I read in the Eduard website you can either apply the seatbelts “dry” directly on the painted seatbelt or “wet” if the seatbelt has been coated in Future.

I almost always like to coat my cockpits with Future (in preparation for a wash), however in this review I choose to apply the seatbealts over a “flat surface” (i.e, just over enamel paint).