Products in this review are:
Great Wall Hobby Mig-29 and Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) Landing gear for the GWH Mig-29.
The Messerschmitt BF-110 has received a lot of bad press in recent years, mainly because it was not able to contend with comtemporary RAF fighters during the battle of Britain. However, following the Battle of Britain, the type continued in production, and actually was quite successful in the close support role, especially against the Russians, and later, with more powerful engines as the “Gustav” model, as a night fighter it was very useful against RAF night bombers.
Model Art Modeling Magazine is a Japanese publication that is released monthly. The text is mainly in Japanese with some English subtitles throughout. One quality about these magazines is the high quality of the photographs and the models that are used.
In this months magazine the feature article on probably one of the most daunting tasks that many modelers fear. Finishing models in natural metal finishes! This tends to send fear into the hearts of many modelers, including myself.
Model Art covers this subject in thirty seven pages using plastic models, actual pictures and paint examples with a mix of color and black and white photos. The models used are an F-86, T-33, C-46, H-21 and T-6. They use several different mediums to get the desired effect. The paint of choice for the article is Mr. Color and they use multiple colors and one color set, JASDF Aluminized Old-Timer Colors. The other medium that is used is a metal foil that is called Duralumin Finish.
Aires with this detail set has provided the modeler with the means to upgrade the 1/72 Su-27UB Trumpeter kit. This resin accessory kit comes with eight resin parts that will assembly into two exhaust nozzles and one small piece of photo-etch that has two afterburner rings, one for each nozzle. The resin is typical for Aires being fine grain and flash free. The photo-etch looks to be stainless steel; at least no bending is required in this case.
The Tupolev TU-2 was introduced into service in 1942 and produced as several variants to include a high speed bomber, dive-bomber, interceptor, recon and as represented in this review kit, a torpedo bomber. The TU-2T torpedo bomber began it service in early 1945 with overall production of the TU-2 continuing until 1948. Russia retired the TU-2 in 1950 but sold many of them to other nation's air forces. China used the TU-2 until the late 1970’s.
Platz has added to their stable of excellent kits with its issue of the Curtiss C-46D, in their JASDF series. The size of the real aircraft means that even in 1/144 scale, this is a pretty good-size model and doesn’t require micro-surgery to work on. The kit’s molded in light gray plastic with beautifully engraved panel lines and detail.
Hobbyboss has an excellent series of hits coming, and their line of F3H Demon kits is most welcomed with their foldable wings and engraved lines.
Like most modern planes, the kit suffers from the ability to do a really good ejection seat. Quickboost gives modelers an option with a perfectly cast five piece seat with molded seat belts. The seat comes with the main body, headrest, center stick and two loops for the sides of the seat. This is an early seat, those early seats being replaced by the MB series.
Assembly is straightforward after removing the parts from the mold block. Notice in the comparison pictures that the kit parts do have some large ejector pin marks and that there are no seat belts. The Quickboost seat is a direct drop in and much better in shape and accuracy. This is the kind of resin I love- large improvement, low cost and easy to use.
It's amazing to me how many of the kits that were not around at all are actually being produced now. One of the companies coming out with a great selection of kits is Kinetic and their S2F Tracker is a lovely kit with options for wing folds and nicely engraved panel lines. One small deficiency of the kit is that it ignored the engine exhausts which are above and below the wings on the nacelles. For a lot of modelers, this is no big deal and the kit still is wonderful. View the images in the slideshow which clearly illustrate the location of the exhausts, with arrows indicating where they should go.
Installation is easy. I used a small drill bit to open the holes and then refined them with files and a knife. Once the holes have been opened and cleaned up, the exhausts were added. Total time, to open the holes and satisfactorily test fit the exhausts was about 15 minutes. This is a great addition to a great kit and would be a great start to weathering the Tracker.
Hasegawa’s 1/48th scale J-35 Draken kit is an excellent representation of the plane. Like most injected kits, the ejection seat is not as good as the rest of the kit due to molding limitations. Now Quickboost comes to the rescue with a highly detailed resin Saab ejection seat with molded belts.
I have enclosed pictures of the Quickboost seat as well as Aires seat and the kit seat. Aires has a set of PE seat belts that need to be built prior to installing the seat, Quickboost's belts are molded onto the seat and the kit seat has no belts at all. The Aires and Quickboost seat are similar with excellent detail on the fabric and seat. The Aires seat comes with an entire replacement cockpit.
This is a very small item when assembled, as the photographs will show. The model is composed of four parts: the body of the indicator, cast in a slick, red plastic; a bezel made from thin steel similar to a photo etch part; the wind vane assembly which appears to me to be of plastic or resin; and two identical instrument dials printed in black on a thin plastic sheet coated with what appears to be white paint.
The instructions are on the reverse of the packaging sheet and show all of the parts painted, prepared and ready to go. The resulting photographs show an extremely detailed and precise completed wind powered indicator. However, reality does not meet up with advertising in this instance.
