Werner’s Wings is an aftermarket company own by the well-known modeler Floyd Werner. A former US Army helicopter pilot, the majority of his products and detail sets relate to rotary wing aircraft, however, he also has some fixed-wing products (Bf 109s!) and instructional DVDs.

This 1/35 scale decal sheet is dedicated to the helicopters of the 160th Special Operations Aircraft Regiment, covering their operations in Somalia, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

The decal sheet includes markings for 20 helicopters including the A/MH-6, MH-60, MH-47, and some special decals for the inside of Chinooks.

The instruction sheet is printed in full color, and each profile has a short description on the location and history of the airframe, if available.

The AH-1G Huey Cobra was delivered to units in 1967, and was first used in combat during the Tet offensive in 1968. The Cobra was used for fire support, escort for transport helicopters, aerial rocket artillery, and in hunter killer teams in conjunction with Hughes OH-6s. Bell built 1,116 AH-1Gs between 1967 and 1973; 300 were lost in combat during the Vietnam conflict. The US Marine Corps used the AH-1G, as well as foreign countries such as Israel and Spain. Israel started to receive their Cobras in 1970, and they were active during the 1973 conflict with Israel’s Arab neighbors. Spain took delivery of their Cobras in 1968, and they were used by both the Spanish Army and Navy.

I had a love-hate relationship with this set of decals. This is my first experience using decals from Yellow-Wings, and also from the new Microscale printing process. The colors are excellent and in perfect register, the film around the edges is minimal, they are exceptionally thin and they cover aircraft from my favorite era. However, the thinness lead to issues with the long and thin decals. Additionally, the smallest decals required a perfectly smooth service to be moved about easily, an important issue on a small model like a 1/72 F3F-2. I ended up purchasing a second set of decals to fix several issues; severely torn decals and a set of wing chevrons that were not sufficiently opaque.

The Decals

This 1/72 multi-aircraft decal set is the second from Yellow-Wings Decals. You get four complete sets of decals on one sheet of decal paper for the following aircraft:

Recently, Airfix has upped its game with the release of several 1/72 scale aircraft kits with new tooling and featuring excellent detail. One such kit is their Hawker Typhoon Mk Ib. Despite Airfix’s excellent out-of-box detail, aftermarket detail manufacturers have tossed their hats into the ring to make an excellent kit even better.

Among them is Quickboost -- bringing their improved engine exhausts. Comparing fairly closely to the kit parts, the Quickboost versions offer the feature of hollowed out exhaust ports – saving the modeler time and stray cuts in the kit parts and fingers from errant drill bits or hobby knives.

Quickboost’s mold quality and fidelity of detail is exceptional, and the hollowed out stacks make a subtle contribution to improving this legendary 1/72 RAF tank killer. Highly recommended for the braille scale modeler wanting to really trick out his Typhoon Ib.

Quickboost’s offers a set of detailed propellers to their aftermarket parts line that are to be used to replace the ones found in the new Airfix 1:72 scale C-47 Skytrain kit. The Quickboost propeller set provides separate blades and hubs that feature far better hub detail and more accurate blade shape than those found in the kit. The size and general shape of the Quickboost parts match the kit parts so they are designed to be quick drop-in replacements with no surgery. An alignment tool is included that makes properly aligning and attaching the blades to the hubs almost foolproof. See the photo below comparing them to the kit parts.