I am a fan of Scale Aircraft Conversions gear, having used a number of SAC gear sets on previous projects. I do not replace the kit gear because they are of poor quality, but rather, the SAC gear are much stronger than the plastic kit parts, and require far less clean-up. It is the strength of the metal SAC parts that I particularly like.

Clean up on the SAC gear usually can be accomplished, when necessary, by a few swipes of an X-Acto blade which removes any mold steps. SAC gear can be primed and then shot with the same colors one would use on the plastic parts. In fact, the painting process for SAC gear is the same as for the kit parts.

SAC parts fit extremely well. In fact, the gear seen in the accompanying images were photographed prior to being glued into place. Some superglue was applied, and after a minute or so the SAC gear were firmly fixed into position.

For those of you who have acquired the Revell Halifax in 1/72, you may have noticed that it gives you lots of options, including three different types of exhausts. While they’re not at all bad as they come in the kit, you’ll need to hollow out the ends of the exhaust stacks and that can be very tedious when you’re doing stacks for four engines. Quickboost, as they usually do, have stepped in and done that for you.

This set is for the Type B exhaust and provide exhausts for all four engines. They are nicely cast, in one piece, with no bubbles and the ends already hollowed out for you. Additionally, the kit parts are in two pieces each and you’d have to remove that glue seam. As usual, they’re a drop fit replacement for the kit parts and at the price, seem well worth it. After all, what is your time worth? Recommended.

Thanks go to Quickboost for providing the sample and to IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review it.

For those of you who have acquired the Revell Halifax in 1/72, you may have noticed that it gives you lots of options, including three different types of exhausts. While they’re not at all bad as they come in the kit, you’ll need to hollow out the ends of the exhaust stacks and that can be very tedious when you’re doing stacks for four engines. Quickboost, as they usually do, have stepped in and done that for you.

This set is for the Type C exhaust, one of the stranger looking types available, and provided exhausts for one engine. Quickboost has made theirs a bit different than the kit parts and I think theirs are a bit more accurate. As usual, they’re a drop fit replacement for the kit parts and at the price, seem well worth it. After all, what is your time worth? Recommended.

Thanks go to Quickboost for providing the sample and to IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review it.

This isn’t book it’s a tome, and a well done one at that. The large 8.5” x 11” pages are chock full of information, photographs and drawings. The book is broken down into 7 chapters the first four of which are divided by specific eras with the last three tackling specific subjects. One entire chapter deals with the downing of both KAL flight KE902 and KE007.

This is a quality book, not your typical hobby shelf reference fodder. It is nicely bound on heavy stock paper and includes the dustcover as pictured. The pages are well laid out with crisp text and hundreds of unique photographs. The profile drawings are just icing on the cake.

The name AK Interactive is probably familiar to many of us as a provider of some very useful weathering products. Although their weathering products work with any model, AK has primarily marketed its products to armor modelers. Recently, however, they have started producing some aircraft-specific products, such as the AK Air Series which currently has “Air Paint” sets (just Luftwaffe and RAF, but I believe more are in the pipeline) and “Air Weathering” sets (designed specifically to weather aircraft engines and landing gear). It looks to me like the “Aces High” magazine has been started to specifically showcase the usage of AK products on aircraft. A note on the cover states “Special Issue: 64 + 20 pages free”, so I suppose future issues will have 64 pages, as compared to this volume which has 84.