Packaged in a oversized poly zip lock bag you find sandwiched between two sheets of cardstock one 2 X 5 ¼ inch yellow precut mask set along with a folded one sided placement sheet. The set covers the canopy and wheels, or should I say canopies when you consider the greenhouse that is the Bf 110G-2. Simple is the word that comes to mind when using these Eduard mask sets; however this set could be a little confusing if you do not carefully reference the placement guide. I always do a light pencil rubbing to reveal the cuts. Remember patients will be your reward. Eduard has a knack for doing these things very well and this one is no different.

The price my be a little had to swallow for the budget minded modeler while others won’t mind a bit shelling out 13 bucks to do the Bf 110 canopy nightmare. I highly recommend this set to anyone building the Eduard Bf110G-2. My thanks go to Eduard and IPMS/USA.

Description

This is a 7 ½ by 9 ½ inches hard-cover book with 240 pages. All photos are in color and the paper quality is exceptional. Every time I turned the page, I thought that I was turning 2 pages due to the thickness of the individual pages.

Book Theme

The title of the book is “US MULTI-ROLE FIGHTER JETS” and prior to reading this book I only had a vague idea as to what “Multi-Role” meant. In this book Davies describes these jets as having the flexibility to change their mission capabilities (air-to-air, air-to-ground, jamming, protection, missile and AAA suppression, refueling, etc.). Some of the changes are done prior to missions and others are called upon depending on mission discoveries or opportunities.

Kit Review

The P-47 “Thunderbolt” went through a major design upgrade in 1943, when its canopy and back fuselage was modified to be a “bubbletop”. Based on the information in the book the ‘inspiration’ for this modification was the RAF Hawker Typhoon.

This book covers all the “bubbletop” production variants from P-47D-25 to the final version, the P-47N, including all the related prototypes.

The first section of the book is dedicated to technical details on each prototype and production variants. There are plenty of historical pictures for each variant including foreign operators and post war operators and even a few historical color pictures too.

The second part of the book is a “walk around” of different P-47 preserved in museums. The walk around is neatly organized by “fuselage”, “tails”, “landing gear”, “engine”, etc.

Thanks to Ray Rimmel of Albatros Productions and to IPMS/USA for giving me the opportunity to review these two wonderful volumes!

These wonderful publications by Gregory Alegi address a little known aspect of early WW1 aviation, the development of early heavy bombers. The volumes are actually the 3^rd and 4^th Caproni volumes authored by Mr. Alegi, but recent access to privately held papers in the Caproni family collection allowed updated and improved description of this unique aircraft.

The Caproni Ca.3 had an impressive (for the time) 22.2 m wingspan, 11m length, an empty weight of 2300 kg, and could stay aloft for 4 hours. The bomber’s ceiling was 4500 m, but it would take 48 minutes to reach that altitude! The aircraft was a twin-boom design with two engines in-line with the tail booms and a third engine in pusher configurations was mounted directly behind the cockpit

While Trumpeter has come out with a lot of large scale Soviet kits, there are usually some things that could stand improvement with these. Their 1/32^nd scale Mig-21 is a solid kit and I have seen it built up into a nice finished kit many times. That being said, one of the deficiencies of the kit is its weapons pylons. They have minimal detail and like a lot of injection molded pylons, no detail whatsoever on the bottom.

Zactomodels has two varieties of these to select from, early and late, and there are differences between the two. The modeler needs to research the particular aircraft to determine which one is needed. The pylons for the Mig are designated BD3-60-21, early or late.

Let's look at what's in the box. The set comes with 4 pylons- two inner and two outer that are perfectly cast. Also contained is a complete sprue of hardware for each pylon including complete sway braces options.