History

The MiG-23, NATO reporting name Flogger, is a swing-wing aircraft, designed by the Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau in the former Soviet Union. It is considered to be a third-generation Soviet jet fighter aircraft. It was the first Soviet Union aircraft to utilize look-down/shoot-down radar and one of the first to be armed with beyond visual range missiles. The MiG-23 was also the first production fighter aircraft to have intakes at the sides of the fuselage. Production started in 1970 with over 5,000 aircraft built.

The design of the MiG-23 was influenced by the McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II and the General Dynamics F-111. The Soviets required a lighter, single-engined fighter to maximize agility. The F-111 and the MiG-23 were initially designed as fighters, but the heavy weight and instability of the F-111 eliminated it from the fighter role. The Mikoyan-Gurevich design bureau kept the MiG-23 light and agile enough to dogfight with enemy fighters.

Having built the Eduard Bf-109E, I would have loved to have had the prop hub off my open-cowled model but I didn’t have the means to do it effectively. Quickboost now provides you with a five-piece prop and hub, plus an alignment tool.

Molded perfectly in light grey resin, the props are suitably thin and of the correct cross section. You will need to drill a hole for the prop shaft, but it is not a big deal. The mounting pins for the prop blades will ensure correct alignment of the blades. Then, all you have to do is leave off the prop hub and you can add a new dimension to your 109. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Quickboost and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review this set.

Hobbycraft’s Morane Saulnier 406 is not a new kit, but that doesn’t mean that Quickboost has ignored it. The M.S.406 has a large pitot tube. This would be hard to keep round when removing the mold lines. Well, hard for me, anyhow. The gun barrels are again something hard to keep round, let alone hollow out the end. Quickboost does this perfectly in every example that I’ve had the pleasure to look at.

The three pieces are perfectly molded in light grey resin. The gun barrels are hollowed out perfectly, as I said before. The cross section on all the parts is perfectly round. These parts will add to the look of your French fighter. Highly recommended.

Thanks to Quickboost and IPMS/USA for the review copy.

It wasn’t too long ago that there were basically three manufactures of plastic figures available through common sources. Through them, you could usually cobble together a crew for a German tank, but if you wanted some figures for a US armored vehicle, you were stuck with some very static poses that came with the kit. Dragon broke new ground with the release of their US tank crew several years ago, and they were leaps ahead of anything on the market, but still some pretty basic poses.

Now we have MiniArt among a host of new producers that is not only providing some great new figures, but in poses that we couldn’t even dream about! This release of a US Tank crew in “close combat” is no exception, and provides five figures, all in various poses.

In The Box

Part 1 – History

The Fokker Eindecker is the classic prototype of the single-seat, purpose-built fighter aircraft. Probably everyone knows the basic story, which is simplified and almost mythical in content. The French aviator Roland Garros had deflector plates bolted to the back side of the prop on his Morane-Saulnier monoplane and began shooting up German observation craft in 1915. This drove the German High Command nuts and they were at a loss about how to deal with this. Or so the story goes. It appears that the bullets striking the deflector plates on Garros’ prop knocked it loose enough to kill the engine somehow and he had to put down behind German lines. The Germans asked Anthony Fokker to come up with an answer and he quickly whipped out a synchronizing mechanism, fitted it to a Parabellum LMG-14 machine gun on his Fokker A-II observation craft and, voilâ, the first fighter was born.