Bob Sanchez has been in or around the military all his life. He was an "Air Force Brat" and credits his mom with getting him addicted to plastic modeling and airplanes. At the age of 10, Bob's mom came home with a Revell 1/32 scale P-51B and signed him up for the Military Book Club. From that point on, he was hooked! Bob Sanchez was in the USAF for 11 years as an Airborne Instrumentation/Telemetry Technician and flew on the Advanced Range Instrumentation Aircraft as a Chief Flight Examiner. He finished his enlistment with Project Speckled Trout as a Flight Test Engineer performing airborne Comm/Nav testing on the Air Force Chief of Staff airplane. He has over 1,200 flight hours in numerous aircraft to include the C-135C, EC-135E, EC-18B/D, E-9A, NASA 757, F-16C, F/A-18B, King Air, MH-53 Pave Low, Bell Jet Ranger and OH-6 Cayuse. Currently Bob is the Business Development Manager for a major aerospace defense contractor.

Congratulations to ICM on releasing a unique kit not available in styrene in any scale. The first release of this kit was the ICM 1/72 ZiL-131 with Trailer Armed Forces of the Ukraine (Kit No. 72817), reviewed here by fellow IPMS/USA reviewer, Marc K. Blackburn. For those who want an individual trailer to pair with another Soviet-era truck, this is the kit for you.

Reference the ICM website,

I’ve built a few Tamiya armor kits over the years but never one of their new 1/48^th scale kits. I thought that I would dip my toes into Tamiya’s quarter scale pond with their new U.S. Light Tank M5A1 Stuart. By the time the M5A1 entered service it’s 37mm gun was no longer effective against German armor. However, the M5 still saw extensive service in all theaters of the war until its end. The Stuart had the advantages of having speed, reliability, mobility, and transportability, and were available in large numbers. The Stuart was used effectively for scouting and infantry fire support.

The kit includes four trees of olive-drab plastic, instructions, decals, polycaps, thread for simulating the tow cable, and two steel weights. The kit depicts a relatively early version of the M5A1 with disk road wheels, without the turret machine gun shield, no sand shields, and no rear stowage bin.

Stratus goes back to 1991 when they launched Fanatyk Plastiku for modelers in the Polish market. The original editorial team included Marek Bronkowski, Wlodzimierz Debicki, Artur Juszczak, Dariusz Karnas, Robert Panek, and Robert Peczkowski. A collaboration with MMP in 1997 later expanded into book publication in 1999 with Stratus, and since then they have built up a list of hard- and soft cover titles on aircraft and aviation, naval, military vehicles, and military history. Stratus / MMPBooks are distributed in North America by Casemate Publications.

One of the latest in Mushroom Model Publications’ White Series, French Bombers of WWII, follows up an earlier volume on French aircraft, 2013’s French Flying Boats of WWII. MMP is calling this book part of their "Rainbow Series." I am guessing that it refers to their large format camouflage and markings set of books in their "White" series that have addressed Bulgaria, Finland, Hungarian, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, and Sweden. This series seems to share a commonality of discussing the specific topic of the evolution of a country's evolution in markings. To that end, this book utilizes many previously unpublished pictures and focuses on individual aircraft and is supplemented with superb color illustrations.