I was a bit taken aback as the name of the book as stated above gives the impression that the book will be dealing with the air forces of all Latin American countries. Then, upon receiving the book I find that this volume addresses Argentina. There is more clarification on the back cover of the book the title given is Air Forces Series, Volume 1. So more to come and already, Volume 2 covers Columbia. This is a series of books about the various Air Forces of Latin American countries but a little more clarification on the titleon the web site would have been beneficial to the reader/buyer.

The book starts with a brief history of the Argentinean Air Force from its creation in 10/08/1912 until the present. It describes their first planes and ends with the present roster of planes for the six branches of service as follows:

Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) is a Texas based company that makes white metal landing gear for a vast number of model aircraft in all scales.

The idea behind the use of metal over the kit supplied plastic landing gear is strength. Over time plastic can give way under the weight of heavy aircraft models.

The metal parts are contained in a clear plastic tray with an attractive color backing showing product details.

While examining each item, it was apparent that masters of the original plastic parts were copied and molded into white metal. Some items needed bending back to shape and straightened a little due to soft nature of the metal.

The general molding was quite clean, but seams would need to be cleaned up. Working with the white metal and cleaning up mold seam lines is detailed on SAC’s comprehensive website.

Once again SAC comes up with a solution to the problem of failing Plastic Landing gear on a “different design” landing gear situation.

The idea of “dead cockroach” landing gear is not new; it is a solution to a problem aircraft designers have had to deal with for years. My personal favorite are all the Cessna’s (Cardinal and Skymaster come to mind) which had the gear partially extend or retract, making for dicey and spectacular landings when the pilot runs out of fuel and absolutely HAS to land. Videos are out there, go to Youtube or whatever to see for yourself.

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: