Jaws is one of the most iconic movies ever and started the summer blockbuster trend. I remember watching it in the theater with my mom 50 years ago. Besides the actors and Bruce the shark, one of the iconic things in the movie is the Orca, Quint’s boat. There were actually two of these. The first was an actual functioning boat bought by production designer Joe Alves and was a lobster boat called the Warlock. It was heavily modified and painted to become the Orca. The second Orca was a sinking version used for the final scene in the movie. Enough history, Agora Models has issued a 1/16^th scale version of the Orca as a 50^th anniversary version. Agora uses a business model where you can buy the entire kit, a Collectors Edition which comes with extras or you can buy them monthly over 1 or 2 years period.

SAC duplicates the Revell cast gear with one exception in this set. The tail wheel fork in the kit comes in halves and SAC has cast it as a single unit. You will need the wheels from the kit for both the main and the tail gear. The main gear legs are cast in halves.

The advantage seems to be not having to fill the sink marks on the injection molded parts. The main gear legs are missing some bracing you will need to add for accurate gear.

My impression of this set is it could be a challenge to use. The main gear has long straight parts and three cross braces that must align to assemble them.

Given the softness of the metal SAC uses, you’re going to spend some time getting it all lined up.

Also in the set are a replacement bulkhead for the tailwheel to mount on, fenders for the main wheels and a replacement for the radio antenna.

The recent Eduard P-51B in 1/32 was quite the hit at the recent IPMS Nats in Fort Wayne. A 1/32 P-51B is rare, and this is only the second kit in this scale (the other is Trumpeter’s 2009 release). Eduard’s new release is billed as their first Royal Hybrid kit (which represents a premium extension of the standard Eduard Hybrid line), consisting of injected molded plastic, 3D printing, and cast resin parts, decals, canopy masks and wheel well masking plugs.

From the Eduard website:

The Royal Hybrid edition kit of the famous US fighter aircraft P-51B Mustang in 1/32 scale.

The kit offers markings for 8 aircraft of 8th and 9th Air Force

This book contains 88 pages, 62 b/w photos, 39 color photos, 16 color profiles, 1 color map, 4 diagrams, and 12 tables. It covers the war plans, policy, manufacturers, and SAC from 1945 to 1990. This is done in two chapters.

The world post WWII presented many challenges for the USAAC/USAF. The need to carry atomic weapons and to deliver them deep into the Soviet Union in time of war was paramount! This book is broken down into two chapters. The first takes up 22 pages and covers and covers how aircraft increased in size and complexity with focus on the development of more powerful engines, both jet and piston to power these aircraft.

Aries has provided this very nice resin upgrade for the Trumpeter Kit for the weapons pylons on the early version of the A-1 Skyraider.

The set includes 50 resin parts and a single sided instruction sheet.

All the parts are very detailed and will add a lot of details to the current kit details.

The parts are produced with no flash or material to remove.

In conclusion these parts will add so much more details to the standard kit.

Thanks go to Aries for providing this kit to review and IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it for them.