The AN/ALE-47 Countermeasures Dispenser system is a defensive system fitted to many current military aircraft. It is used to dispense flares or chaff or both to counter the tracking systems of incoming missiles and has been in use since the mid-to-early 2000’s by the United States and many other countries.

This set from Brengun provides the chaff/flare dispenser portion of the AN/ALE-47 system in two different versions. One version has round dispenser holes, while the other version has more oval holes. There are three identical castings, each with 10 dispensers on it. There are seven dispensers with round holes and three with oval holes on each casting. The various dispensers depict different load outs from completely empty to completely full.

Phoenix Scale Publications came to be at Scale Model World in 2021and was formed by a veteran group of aviation and scale modeling talents. They have come out with a series of books on specific planes and also what is being reviewed here, a wonderful monthly magazine, Phoenix Aviation Modelling, which is available as individual choices from their web site, or even better a subscription. The magazines are also currently available at 250 Barnes & Noble stores for $12.99.

Inside the magazine are 10 feature articles with specific builds, coverage of newsstand (publications), Czech News (covering new releases from the Czech Republic), new kit releases, along with coverage of new aftermarket and decals. There is also a nice comment from IPMS/UK.

The builds in the July 2022 issue include:

This set supplies drop-in replacements for the kit exhausts for Zvezda’s Pe-2 kit. The set includes two sets of exhausts, left and right for each engine, and the coversheet lists the original kit part numbers that are being replaced by the new exhausts.

As you would expect from Quickboost, the exhausts are very finely cast, and feature hollowed out ends for each exhaust stack which will greatly improve the look of the exhausts on your model.

To get an idea of how the parts would look in use, I painted them Testor’s Metalizer non-buffing steel and then dusted them with a reddish-orange pastel powder. All that is left is to dust them with a little black or dark grey paint at the tips.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Aires/Quickboost for the review sample.

The new Airfix 1/72 Tempest V kit is very nice but, in some areas there’s a slight lack of detail and sharpness. These two new releases from Brengun/Hauler in the Czech Republic can fix one of those areas of weakness.

Cast in Brengun’s standard medium grey resin, there are two different items - what they term Early and Late Wheels. What this means is reality is that early Tempests had Typhoon main wheel hubs with 5 spokes. Sometime in the JN-series, this changed to a new 4-spoke design, but the exact cut off is not known. What is known is that the first 50 Tempest Vs (JN729 to JN773 and JN792-796) were built using the centre-sections from a cancelled Typhoon contract, so it would make sense that they, at least, had the 5-spoke wheels.

I was able to obtain a copy of the Airfix kit and so could make a direct comparison of the kit and resin wheels. As the photo shows, the resin parts are much more refined and have much sharper detail.

Subtitled ‘Air-to-Air Images,’ this book by Key Publishing is a photographic collection of such images of the RAF during the Seventies and Eighties, a period marked by tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in which the RAF was a major player in the defense of Western Europe through its forces in the UK and West Germany.

Author Tony Paxton was a frontline RAF fighter pilot and was seemingly never without his camera, as all the 200 or so photos in this book are all by his hand. Most are of excellent quality, given the limitations of film types of the period, and many are produced full page and in full colour.

The book is divided into a number of chapters, starting with a brief introduction to the Cold War and continuing with various aspects of the RAF. Generally these concentrate on a specific role or aircraft type. As such, the reader will find coverage of such types as the Tornado, Phantom, Lightning, Harrier and VC10 amongst many others.