Revell’s PBY-5A Catalina has been around for 20 years now and I’ve seen quite a few built. It looks large and impressive when finished. The kit comes in two styles - the “-5” which has no wheel wells, and the “-5A” which does. Eduard has released sets for the PBY-5A which allow improvements to the entire airframe. This set (#49697) addresses the cockpit and interior.

The set comes with two beautiful photoetch frets. One is colorized and includes a multi-part instrument panel, a full set of seat belts, and various panels and boxes for the cockpit. The second is not colorized and includes replacement parts for the cockpit floors, the nose gunners floor, replacement rudder pedals and linkages, ammo storage racks for the waist gunners area, and again, various boxes and panels.

Review

Airfix has released a Jet Engine kit, part of their line of “Engineering Models”. This is an interesting kit, as it intends to explain the basics of how a jet engine operates and it introduces the modeler to some very basic electrical skills.

The kit is molded in red, white, blue, clear and silver plastic. It requires no paint and it actually is put together using (dare I say?) screws rather than plastic glue! It even provides you with a screwdriver.

There are about 50 parts which are well molded and the parts themselves require little clean up before assembly. The instructions guide you through the electrical connections of a handle, starter button and mini-electric motor/blower which actually spins the engine.

The J2M Raiden (Allied code name Jack) was designed by Jiro Horikoshi (of A6M Zero fame) and built by Mitsubishi for the Imperial Japanese Navy as a land-based point interceptor. It was designed to counter high altitude bombers. It relied more upon speed, climb-rate, and armament over maneuverability to perform this task. Initial production aircraft suffered from numerous problems with its Mitsubishi Kasei 13 engine, which in turn delayed production until solutions were found. The Kasei 13 was eventually replaced with the Kasei 23a engine on J2M2 and J2M3 production aircraft. The J2M5 Type 33 aircraft, represented by the model under review here, featured an enlarged cockpit and canopy and a Kasei 26 supercharged engine, giving this variant more speed at high altitudes with a consequent lowering of effective range.

This softcover publication is 80 pages of useful information about the swept-wing F-84F and RF-84F jets from Republic Aircraft. It’s also Warpaint’s 100th book, so they’ve put a flashy block at the top of the front cover with a large 100 to let you know.

The F-84F and its stable mate the reconnaissance RF-84F were supposed to be Republic’s answer to the fact that the earlier F-84s could not compete evenly with the MiG-15s they met in the skies over Korea. Engine development and reliability issues meant the aircraft wasn’t fielded until after the end of the conflict. Even then, the aircraft was somewhat underpowered and required a very long takeoff roll, ensuring the nickname of ‘Hog.’ This also contributed to the aircraft being utilized more as a fighter/bomber than a pure fighter.

As with most injection molded kits, the Academy F-4B ejection seats have no lap belts or shoulder harnesses, and are also very basic. The shape of the cushions is also very questionable. Eduard comes to the rescue with their Brassin line of products and gives us some very detailed ejection seats. There are five pieces of resin and a very busy photo etch seat for each of the two seats provided. The seats without any belts or harnesses are impressive. When you add all of the belts, handles, levers and wires to the seats, they are really quite nice.