Airfix. The name may have sent shudders down your spine and given you nightmares of bad fit, no cockpit, bad decals, and overly thick canopies, but fear no more. Airfix has jumped into the 21st century and has come out swinging with beautiful new kits. They are accurate in size and shape due to laser scanned 3d modeling of actual subjects. The plastic is soft but in a good way. Liquid and tube cement will make the seams all but disappear so that putty use is minimal if nonexistent. This review is about their new tool 1/72 scale Boulton Paul Defiant.

History

The Vietnam War was a helicopter war. Many of the most lasting images are of fleets of helicopters, mostly the ubiquitous UH-1 “Huey,” filling the sky. What would newsreel footage of that war be without a sound track of the “whup-whup-whup” of chopper blades?

Among the many uses the UH-1 was put to was as an early version of the gunship, the ancestor of today’s Apache. Those Huey guns took a crew of four: a commissioned or warrant officer pilot (left seat) and copilot, and two enlisted door gunner/crew chief in back. This four figure kit represents the aviators of those gunships employed in that conflict.

Flying Colors Aerodecals has updated their 1/72 Swedish National Insignia sheet for the recent explosion in Swedish aircraft from Tarangus (Saab Tunnan), Special Hobby (J 9, J 28, J J 21 and J 21R), and Airfix (J 8 Gladiator, J 26 Mustang, J 28 Vampire, and S 31 Spitfire). See the table, below for what it contains, but you can do anything from an Avro Lancaster to Hughes 300. The instructions provide a guide to insignia size for 62 different aircraft to cover your wings and fuselage. If you are in to ‘What If” or fantasy, the sky is the limit.

Flying Colors Aerodecals has updated their 1/48 Swedish National Insignia sheet for the recent explosion in Swedish aircraft from Tarangus (Saab Lansen and Viggen), Special Hobby (He 115), and Pilot Replicas (Saab J-21). See the table below for what it contains, but you can do anything from an Avro Lancaster to Hughes 300. The instructions provide a guide to insignia size for 62 different aircraft to cover your wings and fuselage. If you are in to ‘What-If” or fantasy, the sky is the limit.

Having flown the AH-1G, Q, Mod S, Prod S and Prod S (ECAS) while on active duty with the U.S. Army, I am always drawn to any version of the AH-1. It is truly an exciting aircraft to fly and it just looks plain wicked! The aircraft has been around since 1966 and the AH-1Z is the latest incarnation of that airframe, and tends to make you think it’s going to be around much longer, still. And Kitty Hawk has done a great job of presenting us with a detailed model of the Marines’ newest helicopter. And, our very own Floyd Werner was involved in the design and production of this kit from the very beginning. Thanks go to Floyd for all of his time and efforts to produce this kit. Now, if he can just convince them to do a G Model or F model in 1/48 or 1/35, we’ll be on a roll.