This is another kit designed for Zvezda's war-game "Art of Tactic". This time it is a Vickers K machine-gun with a crew of 4, used by the BEF in France in 1940.

There are 25 parts including the gun, 4 crewmen, a base, and a flag piece for the game, as well as a movement card. Most of the parts make up the crew, with only 4 parts for the gun, and one of these includes the arm of the gunner. It is the usual snap-together kit made out of their usual softer plastic. The parts can be trimmed with a sharp knife but cleaning up the mold line on the figures is difficult. Tamiya liquid glue was used to help keep things together.

One of ICM’s most recent offering is a set of PAG-14 Airfield plates used in the construction of airfields by the Soviet Union at home and in the Warsaw Pact nations. This particular set is for 1/48th scale. Knowing little of Soviet airfield construction – and what I did know centered on the use of hexagonal blocks for construction – I conducted online research into the PAG-14 plates. My first queries turned up a few photos, but then I found a research paper online — Naum Sapozhnikov and Raymond Rollings, Soviet Precast Pre-stressed Construction for Airfields, April 2007 — that shed a lot of light onto the use of these plates for airfield construction. Here is a little of the background from that paper.

Modelers’ Guide to the P-38 Lightning is the third in a series of books published by Aero Research to aid modelers who want to build accurate models of specific aircraft. According to the first sentence in the book’s introduction: “This book is a guide to building any military variant of the P-38 Lightning, using existing kits.” That is not an understatement. The book will be a very useful reference for anyone planning to build any P-38. All variants, from prototype to the M model (and all photo-recon versions) are included. Author Jay Sherlock has done a thorough job of researching and organizing pertinent information that modelers usually find they need sometime during a project. As a matter of fact, the book will come in handy before starting the project – when deciding which kit to purchase. The first chapter describes in detail all kits currently available in 1/44, 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 scales, and each description includes a small color photo of the box top.

History

Being that there is so much out there on the Bf-109, I will not take up any time with the history. The E variant was the first major upgrade of this airframe and was the main variant from the beginning of the war until mid-1941.

The Kit

This kit is made up of 3 sprues of grey injected plastic and 1 clear sprue. The parts are flash-free and have very fine detail. The only problem I had was the small parts (pitot tube, antenna mast, gun barrels, and counterweights) that have two attachment points on the sprue. It made it very difficult to remove these, and in the case of the mast...I broke it. That being said, I have to hand it to Airfix as their new tooled kits are fantastic. The decal sheet gives you markings for two aircraft – one Luftwaffe In desert cammo (black 8) from 1941 and one Royal Bulgarian aircraft from 1942. Since no swastika is provided and I had no spares, my choice was simple.

The parts are molded in gray, black, and chrome. According to the instructions, the first step in assembly is the motor. The locating pins are small, making it hard to line up the parts. I used a slow-drying plastic glue rather than cyanoacrylate to make sure it was aligned properly.

Then I dip-painted the fenders, gas tank, carry boxes, and parts F-9 and F-10, using a special process with water and paint. I sprayed black and chrome into a five-gallon bucket filled with water, then hand-dipped each completed and prepared part in. As I withdrew the parts, the paint, floating on top of the water, coated each part in a swirling, soft-edged pattern.

The Aircraft

The Ju-52 was actually known as the Ju-52/3m. The 3m stands for 3 engine (dreimotor). The original Ju-52 was the Ju-52 1m which was single engine (einmotor). When the prototypes were flown, it was discovered that the plane was underpowered, and two engines were added, one on each wing.

The Ju-52 had an interesting exterior. The outer skin was corrugated, giving the skin far greater strength than a flat sheet of metal. This allowed the plane to have fewer spars and braces, so it could be lighter, which increased the cargo carrying ability. Unfortunately, the wrinkled skin also added drag, but in the 1930s there was much less interest in high speed and more interest in ease of assembly and maintenance.

The Ju-52 was known as “Tante Ju” (Aunt Ju) and “Iron Annie”. The Ju-52 remained in production until the end of the war, and some continued in service until the late 1970s.

The Aircraft

The TR-1A is/was a development of the famous U-2. The U-2 is a high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft with multiple sensor arrays, allowing photo, radar, electronic, and signals intelligence. The original U-2A was developed for the CIA by Lockheed, using a fuselage from the F-104 and extra-long, glider-like wings. This allowed the U-2 to fly at altitudes well above those which could be reached by any other jet aircraft. The U-2’s ability to fly over any area with impunity ended with the development of the Soviet SA-2 Guideline SAM, which shot down Francis Gary Powers over the Soviet Union in 1960 and Major Rudolf Anderson Jr. over Cuba in 1962.

The TR-1A was put into production in the 1980s as a tactical reconnaissance aircraft. It is identifiable by the two large sensor “superpods”, one on each wing. It is identical with the U-2R, and all TR-1s have been redesignated as U-2Rs. The U-2R is larger than the original U-2.

This review is of the MiniArt Diorama with Park Wall, part of their diorama series of bases for armor models. It was a pretty easy build, and it looks nice when finished, but it did take some work and some modifications to make it look good.

First of you get a sheet of very soft plastic to use as the base. This has some very nicely done details with the pathway and some small rocks in the road. The base is marked off for where you will put the wall.

History

Introduced in November of 1987, the NSR 250R was the second generation of the NSR line. In what many would call the best year for the NSR line, that model year introduced many innovations that made it a race winning performer. The most significant advance was the PGM module that controlled the carburetor performance, based on input from the throttle and speedometer to adjust the carbs in real time. This was the first computer control of its kind on a Honda motorcycle. This was in conjunction with the Honda RC, or” revolution control” system, an adjustable exhaust valve that constricted outflow at low RPM and opened at high RPM to produce optimum power at any throttle setting. Added to coated pistons to reduce friction wear were larger tires to keep the bike on the road and a powerful 249cc engine producing 49 hp. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle over 125cc and I thought that was impressive!

It seems amazing to me that Trumpeter is the fourth model company to market a 1/48 scale plastic kit of the Supermarine Attacker F.1 (the others being Classic Airframes, Falcon, and Magna Models). Amazing because this aircraft’s single most significant reason for mention in the history of aviation is the fact that it was the Fleet Air Arm‘s first jet fighter. It was not particularly successful in that role…it was just the first.

It comes as no surprise that I love the Eduard Fw-190A series of kits. Having had the pleasure of building quite a few of them, I have often remarked at the quality of the decals. These decals are printed by Eduard and typical of Eduard’s quality; these decals are actually as good as any other aftermarket decal in the world. They rival the quality of Cartograf.

The stencil decal themselves are all contained on a 4” x 3 ¾” decal sheet. The decals are crisp, perfectly printed, and in perfect register. They are suitably thin with minimal carrier film. One of the nice things is that the decals have wing walk areas in grey and black. There are options throughout the sheet, like the two different versions of black and two white versions of Nicht anfassen on the sheet. The landing gear servicing stencil is also provided in two styles.

Sometimes in the model building universe that most of us live in, the planets align just right and a little glimmer of satisfaction shines through. This is the case with these fire extinguishers. I am currently building a conversion of an M3 IDF Sandwich Car. When the review list made its second round and no one had laid claim to the Plusmodel items, I volunteered to do the ones that no one wanted. When they arrived, I thought where and how I could use them instead of just painting and showing them off. Looking over my reference material, I noticed that many of the different Sandwich vehicles and the M3 in particular had fire extinguishers mounted on the right front panel in front of the engine access panel! How neat is that? WooHoo!!!! Confetti everywhere, and too bad not all modeling experiences work out that well.

The diminutive A-37 Dragonfly by Monogram/Encore is a nice kit, but the engine intakes and exhausts leave a little bit to be desired. One way to fix this is to hide the see-through with these covers from AMS Resin.

Molded in light grey resin, these four pieces are beautifully formed. They simply have to be painted red and added to the intake and exhausts. You may want to add Remove Before Flight tags which aren’t included but readily available. Because they are tapered, these are easily added after the model is done so if you already have a built kit, don’t fret, you can add these at any time.

These simple plugs are easy to add, inexpensive, and they do what they are designed to do, cover the intakes and exhausts.

Highly recommended

Thanks to AMS Resin for the review set and IPMS/USA for the review opportunity.