Once again, another stunner by Wingnut Wings. The upper wing simply clicks into place!! You can’t say enough in praise about these kits. I’d buy them all if I had the money. (Maybe I will someday…)

Included in the kit are high quality Cartograf decals with markings for six different aircraft.

The kit has a highly detailed, 18 part 260HP Daimler Mercedes D.VIA engine, optional spinner, stick, wheel control systems, wireless, flares, radiators, cameras, propellers, and teddy bear accessories. Fine, in scale rib tape detail is present on the wings.

Full scale rigging diagrams are provided, plus a thirty page instruction booklet that has it all. A little tricky, but it is all there!

Since the F-86 is my favorite aircraft, I just had to have the Aires Wheel Bay detail set when it came up for review. This set is made to fit the Kinetic / Italeri kit in 1/32. They are both the same kit with different boxing.

I bought a couple of the kits last year and thought they were great, with super detail. This wheel bay detail sets takes it over the top.

The set is cast in very brittle light grey resin. The casting blocks are easy to remove with a razor saw and some sanding. Included with this set are all of the necessary struts and a set of very clear instructions.

Unfortunately, there are no color references, so I had to resort to Squadron’s very fine F-86 Walk Around book by Larry Davis. In this book are many fine detail photos and some wonderful drawings by Don Greer and Richard Hudson.

From a company, although 10 years old but brand new to injection molded kits, comes a brand new model of the T-6 Texan II. To the best of my knowledge, this is a first-time release of a never before kitted aircraft in 1/48th scale. First, a little about the Texan II, a modified version of the Pilatus PC-6. My stepson was the lead A&P mechanic of Hawker Beechcraft that was able to obtain the USAF blessing by certifying the various modifications in San Antonio, Texas. During this time, I was able to become quite familiar with the bird, but alas, couldn’t get permission to get any “stick time,” being of civilian status. The Texan II has quite an impressive flight envelope, with the performance figures being closer to that of a P-51 Mustang than that of the original T-6. In short, “this ain’t your father’s Oldsmobile”. Oh well, enough wool gathering and on to the kit.

First, thanks once again to Gary at Squadron for providing IPMS/USA yet another review item. We count on the support of many companies, small and large; Squadron has survived just about every trial and tribulation imaginable for a business while continuing to provide excellent service and products!

With Squadron having branched out into the aftermarket genre over the past few years, their in-house products continue to improve in quality. Such is the case with these propeller and spinner assemblies.

The Revell/Monogram (RM) P-61 was, at the time of its release in 1974, a market-setter for detail. In many ways, it still is, but the kit propellers have a difficult-to-remove seam between the front and rear spinner halves, and there is no propeller mounting boss detail as is very evident on the real item; the RM blades are cast to the front spinner dome. Strong, certainly, but improvement could be made…

I have built several PJ Productions kits, done at least one of their conversions, and a number of their detail parts. I have real respect for Phillipe’s ability to produce a really good resin product.

You get one resin pour with 2 seats and 2 ejection handles. Both of the seats were free of flaws or bubbles, and those fine little handle assemblies were also flawless.

Rather than start from scratch with this project, I thought I would take a Mirage I had built previously and add the PJP seat. I could have used a Jaguar, but decided that it would be nicer to improve one of my several Mirages. Then I ran into the problem. Three of the four Mirage kits I’ve built have been PJ Production kits or conversions, and they already had good resin seats. OK, I was going to use a Dagger I built 20 years ago with Argentine markings from the Malvinas/Falklands war. And to tell the truth, I can’t remember whose kit it is.