There are many little battles that led up to the Second World War. Some you know about most of them, but many, such as the battle over Khalkhin Gol, you know nothing about. Some of it has to do with the location, the China/Russian border in Mongolia. This is a unique look at this early air battle between the Russians and the Japanese.

Fought over barren hills and plains, the story of the Khalkhin Gol battle is marred by inconsistent data from the Soviet and Japanese sides. The Soviets call the battle the Nomonhan Incident. Both sides say the other attacked first and, despite the best research, we will probably never know who did what first. What is known is that early Soviet and Japanese Army fighters and bombers met up and had some fierce battles.

The Great Wall FW-189 is a really nice kit but one thing you notice about the airplane is the large expanse of windows around the cockpit. The whole procedure of masking the canopy would just about kill me and take hours of work. Now, if you are like me and like to get on with the painting, anything that will make canopy masking faster and easier is just what I’m looking for.

The Eduard masks are designed from “Kabuki” tape. This means that they are made from a really pliable tape that you can visually see is down around the edges, just like Tamiya tape. Besides all the windows and because this sheet is so large, Eduard also gives you masks for the wheels. If my counting is correct, there are 93 individual masks included on this large sheet. Can you imagine having to cut that many masks out yourself? I can’t. That kit would just languish in the to-do pile. Now, thanks to Eduard, the kit will probably see the light of day.

Model-Master has added a number of turned brass pitot tubes to their line of metal detailing parts for kits ranging from 1/32 to 1/72. This one is designed to enhance any 1/72 Hawker Hunter. It is amazing to see how much something as small as this will improve the appearance of a 1/72 scale model. How small is it? It’s so small that it is almost lost in the package it comes in (so a little extra care is recommended when removing it from the package and while handling it).

Comparing it to the kit part clearly illustrates how much an injection molded plastic part may have to be bulked up for manufacturing…resulting in something that is far thicker than it should be. The photo below of the Master-Model tapered metal part next to the kit part on the sprue shows how much out of scale the kit part is.

The Higgins PT boat is lesser known than the Elco PT boat probably because a future president wasn't driving one that got cut in half by an enemy destroyer. There were only 209 Higgins PT boats built versus 326 Elco 80-foot PT boats, but it’s claimed by various sources that more Higgins 78-foot PT boats survive today.

This soft-cover book measures 8 1/4 by 11 inches, the same as others in this "On Deck" series, and is 80 pages in length, with a good mix of vintage photos and other shots of some surviving restored boats. It is also available in a hardcover version for an additional nine dollars, as stock number SS66008.

Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) has released a set of white metal replacement landing gear parts for Pacific Coast Models’ 1/32 Spitfire Mk. IX kit. This set is a direct replacement for the kit’s parts with some minor improvements to details. The main gear legs are exact copies of the kit parts with the same mounting lug cast in place. However, Dr. Billy Crisler collaborated with SAC to provide a corrected tail wheel and separate tail wheel strut to improve the detail in that area.