Ampersand Publishing offers a quarterly photo-magazine featuring dozens of black and white photographs of armor, military vehicles, personnel, etc. Many are rare or seldom seen pictures. Each photograph is accompanied by a caption explaining what is depicted and the historical context. The reader will also see original line drawings and pictures from technical publications. These softbound publications contain from four to six articles. The subject of this review is Issue 28.

This 96-page issue contains five articles. They are:

Trumpeter has continued to add to its growing line of Soviet prime movers. The recently released ChTZ S-65 tractor is just that, a tractor. The vehicle’s history from the side of the box: “The STALINETZ S-65 (or Starlinze-65) was basically an improved design based on the S-60 and succeeding it on the production line from June 20 1937, it has a 65-75 hp M17 diesel engine. As of 1941 the STALINETZ S-65 was the most numerous type of full-tracked artillery tractor with in the Soviet Army. The exact figure how many of the 37,626.” The kit includes eight sprues of approximately 200 parts and thirteen sprues of track; approximately 234 parts. There’s a small sheet of PE, clear headlight lenses, and decals for the instrument cluster.

History

The IT-1 tank was a Soviet cold war missile tank based on the T-62 Hull. The tank was specially designed to carry and fire the 3M7 Drakon missile from a pop-up launcher. It saw limited service from 1968 to 1970. It was withdrawn due to the limited ammo it could carry and the large dead zone around the tank caused by the minimum range of the missile. Most were converted into recovery vehicles.

The Kit

The contents of the kit are nicely boxed and individually wrapped in plastic sealed bags. There are 19 sprues, 1 clear sprue, 1 PE fret, and the lower hull section. The instruction are in booklet form with 12 pages of black and white instructions. A separate color painting guide is also included. No decals come with the kit and there are no instructions to guide you as to where they might have gone.

The yearly new releases in Tamiya’s 1/48th scale Military Vehicle range are getting fewer and fewer in number compared to when the range was launched seven or eight years ago, but when they do turn up, they are well worth the wait. The latest in the range is the massive JS-2 Heavy Tank, produced as a counter to the German military’s Tiger 1 heavy tank. Heavily armored and with a potent 122mm main gun, this beast proved very effective both in battling the heavier German armored vehicles as well as being used in the “breakthrough” role in the mid- to late-war battles on the Eastern Front.

Pro Art Models has another new set of enhancements, and this time it’s a vehicle communications package for those of you who are into super-detailing the newer types of vehicles in the U.S. Special Forces genre. This set comes with 18 pieces of high quality light tan resin which is detailed to the max. I have yet to find any bubbles within the resin that are so often found in lesser quality resins. Also included in the kit is a photo etch fret containing parts which make up the shelves, cases, legs, and small switches for the radios and computers to fit on or into. The resin parts consists of the radios, power inverters, PC screens, keyboards, a hand- held GPS, antennas, and even the plug-in power modules. The detail is the best it can get and the photo etch antennas and shelves (including legs) add to the already fine detail. I have assembled some pieces to show what it could look like, and this will be placed into my vehicle when I reach that point in assembly.