History Brief

When the F-105 Thunderchief entered service in 1958, it was the heaviest single-engine combat aircraft and was commonly known as the "Thud" by its crews. In March 1956 the USAF placed an order for 65 F-105Bs and 71 were built. Although it set speed records the 105B was besieged with problems, typically the F-105B required 150 hours of maintenance for each flying hour. Most of these problems were addressed under Project Optimize and by 1964 it was relegated to ANG squadrons.

Scale Aircraft Conversions produces metal replacement parts for hundreds of kits in a wide variety of scales. Some of the landing gear sets are generic while others are designed to fit a specific kit. I’ve had some luck with cross-purposing some of the SAC gear, and having a Revell UH-34 in my stash I decided to compare this gear set, engineered for the Gallery kit, with the parts contained in my Revell kit.

The Parts

The SAC product is designed for an H-34, and my Revell kit is a UH-34. Googling images, I came to the conclusion that while there are some differences between the strut braces between the “H” and “UH”, I found enough similarity in appearance to assuage my concerns about significant differences in the appearance of the struts and bracing.

This accessory is designed to be used with the Airfix, Hasegawa, Heller or Matchbox kits. The parts are a replacement for the pitot tube, angle of attack probe (AOA) and secondary pitot, located on the vertical stabilizer. I used a Heller Viggen which was previously used for a paint mask review. The sensor and pitots are silver on this aircraft. I found a great shot of a Viggen on airliners.net which showed this color nicely.

The Kit

You get three finely done brass parts in a plastic envelope, which is inside another plastic envelope. This is done to prevent losing these tiny parts during shipping, handling or storage.

Assembly

I painted the brass parts with Testors Aluminum Metalizer.

Review

Italeri’s P-47D in 1/48 scale is re-boxing the well-known Academy P-47D. If you visit different websites (including Italeri’s), you will see “Photo-etch parts” listed as a part of the kit; however in my review sample the photoetch part was not included. I actually think it is an error on the websites, as there is no reference to the photoetch fret neither in the box nor in the instructions.

Once you open the box, you’ll find 5 sprues, plus an extra sprue for the clear parts. There are several options for underwing stores: bombs, drop tanks, bazooka rockets, and HVAR rockets. Just be aware that some of them are for the P-47N and not applicable to the –D mark. You also get an excellent decal sheet with a great selection of markings, two USAAF NMF, plus French and Brazilian markings in Olive Drab over neutral grey, all of them serving in the Italian Front from 1944-45. Stencils are provided for one model.

When one looks at French aircraft of the period immediately before and during World War Two, it is evident that there were two schools of thought when it came to aircraft design! One school was to design elegant, graceful and beautiful aircraft. The other was to see just how ugly they could make the airplane and it still fly and perform the duties it was designed for. This book is filled with examples of aircraft from both schools.

The book begins with a discussion of the main categories of French flying boats and what these categories entail. The “Croisiere” category is the very long range maritime reconnaissance aircraft with a range of 2100 to 2800 miles. The “Exploration” category was the long range maritime reconnaissance with a range of 1200 to 1900 miles. The last category, “Surveillance” had a range of up to 775 miles. Floatplanes are not discussed in this volume.