Scale Aircraft Conversions continues to crank out metal landing gear for a lot of recent kits. One of their latest offerings is this set for the impressive 1/48 Zvezda Bf-109F kit. The SAC set contains both main gear with separate oleo scissors, and also a new tailwheel. The tailwheel appears to be slightly smaller in diameter than the kit part; otherwise, there doesn’t appear to be any difference.

QB 48446 (Rotol Spinner) and QB 48447 (Spitfire Spinner), each $6.50

The Italeri Hurricane is getting a lot of attention from the aftermarket manufactures. Quickboost has released two resin Rotol propellers for it. One of the sets has the typical Rotol spinner (more pointed); the other set has a Spitfire spinner (more blunt). I’ve read that during the Battle of Britain there were some Hurricanes fitted with Spitfire spinners.

A nice feature of these aftermarket sets is the provision of a “tool” to ensure the proper pitch of all the propeller blades. After sanding off the back of the spinners, the tool provides you with a “seat” for the spinner, and then you only need to tack the propeller blade in place with a drop of superglue.

Quickboost has released several items to enhance the Italeri Hurricane. Among them are these “drop-in” replacement parts for the gun barrels. They are very nicely rendered in medium grey resin, with crisp panel lines and good depth for the barrels.

During construction, however, I ran into problems. The replacement parts are a bit too wide to fit in their slots in the wings. Maybe the problem is due to my construction of the wings, but neither the starboard nor the port gun barrel would fit.

I’ve measured the slots and the resin parts and maybe the problem is that both the replacement parts and the slots have the exact same width (20.0 mm, measured with a caliper). Perhaps the resin parts should have been a tad narrower to be able to fit in the slots?

If you are familiar with Air Modeller, then you have a set of expectations regarding the content. You know that the images are stunning, the layout of the content is excellent, and that the coverage of the “build” projects (usually six aircraft models in various scales featuring kits from different manufacturers) is consistent from issue to issue.

In this issue you will be treated to some excellent images of projects featuring:

The F-14 Tomcat will likely be the greatest fleet defender known by my generation. Although retired now, the F-14 was ready from the start to carry an array of weapons including the AIM-9 Sidewinder, AIM-7 Sparrow, AIM-54 Phoenix (the ultimate missile of the US arsenal, which is also now retired), various bombs, and an internal 20mm Vulcan cannon. The 64 foot, 1.5 inch long wings could be swept to 38 feet, 2.5 inches or overswept for storage to 33 feet 3.5 inches. The plane was 62 feet, 8 inches long and 16 feet tall weighing 40,104 pounds empty, and 74,349 pounds at maximum takeoff weight. Powered by a pair of Pratt & Whitney TF-30-P414A turbofans (with 20,900 pounds of thrust each), the F-14A never reached its full potential, as the D-model would later with General Electric F110-GE-400 turbofan engines (with 23,500 pounds of thrust each).