Ampersand’s latest book by David Doyle continues to expand on their Visual History format as this edition follows up on Doyle’s “Kübelwagen and Schwimmwagen: A Visual History of the German Army’s Multi-Purpose Vehicles”. Ampersand got their start in 1993 when Pat Stansell distributed a free issue of Military Miniatures in Review at the IPMS Nationals in Atlanta. Ampersand joined forces with HobbyLink Japan in 2008 and have continued to expand their military AFV publications ever since.

True to the Visual History Series name, the focus of this book in on the visual, detailing the development and service history of the German Army’s Motorcycles of WWII. This is slightly expanded from Ampersand’s standard 120 page version of their Visual History format and it runs 128 pages packed with large, clear photographs.

This is a nice set of jerry can holders that can replace the usually over-scaled plastic holders on military vehicles. The photoetch comes on one small fret that is about 1 ½ in. x 1 5/8 in. Four holders are provided with the photoetch. Each holder consists of seven parts: the holder, four bolts, and two straps for the jerry cans.

The bolt heads are actually six-sided hexagons and are microscopic. I soldered the first bolt head into place, but the solder obscured the shape of the head. The subsequent bolt heads were glued into place with superglue, which worked much better.

Background

Of the many consumable items available to the modern-day modeler, pre-cut masking aids are perhaps one of the most useful types on the market. Originally targeting aircraft areas of interest, recent years have seen a tremendous proliferation into other genre – including military vehicles.

The Product

A recent and pleasant surprise was to see Hauler offer a masking set for Tamiya’s 1/48 scale US Staff Car kit. Having that model on the near-term build list, I just had to jump at the chance to try some Hauler masks for the first time. The set contains two sheets of finely cut, super-thin vinyl masks for glass areas and wheel hubs, and stencils for national insignia stars. A single sheet of placement diagrams is more than sufficient for applying the masks.

If you are building any of the host of Russian military trucks from the Great War, you may find yourself mumbling at the rather iffy rubber tires frequently included with the kits. Although a number of manufacturers have come out with really excellent kits of these workhorses of the Soviet Army, the tires included seem to be a regular stumbling block.

MiniArt has addressed this problem with a series of new detail sets that create beautifully detailed renditions to replace the soft tires included with most of these kits. This set, for instance, not only provides 12 complete tires, but the various hubs, bolts and brake drums needed as well. Each tire itself is composed of five individual “wafers” that when assembled create a realistic and detailed tread pattern. Finely molded manufacturer’s logos are included, of course.

With the recent release of the updated Meng 1/35 D9R Armored Bulldozer to include slat armor, Eduard has released a number of photo-etch detail sets to update the kit and add new details. This is a Meng kit so the detail is fantastic but there can always be some room for improvement, especially with regards to the interior.

This update set has one medium fret of photo-etch parts for the kit. This fret has a large number of color panels to replace all of the kit molded-in panels and placards. As usual with Eduard’s photo-etch sets, the detail for these color panels is a huge upgrade over the kit parts. This is partly due to the finer detail of the new parts when compared to the originals and partly due to their ease of use, just remove the kit detail and drop in the replacements.