A cousin of mine had a Pacer X back in the late 1970s and I thought it was a pretty cool little car, so I thought I’d give the MPC kit a review. I was greatly disappointed in the kit.

Engine

The kit engine is pretty well detailed and the parts fit properly as long as you can get past all the flash. I decided to go to the wild side and installed a small block Chevy engine.

Chassis

The chassis in the kit I received was warped. Even soaking it in hot water wasn’t enough to bring it all the way back. All the running gear is molded as one big piece with very poor engraving.

Interior

The interior matched the chassis for being warped and poorly engraved. Keeping with the different motif, I left out the back seat and covered it with popsicle sticks. I painted the body in HOK limegold kandy or a silver and a gold basecoat.

The Triple Ejector Rack (TER) is a weapon suspension unit that attaches to an aircraft's main racks (pylons), and can carry up to three weapons. The Triple Ejector Rack has a single drop capability so the aircrew can drop the three bombs individually. Aircraft can carry the full range of Mk80, Mk20 series bombs on TER's. There are a lot of Internet references on these so information is plentiful.

Manx dune buggies have been around for several decades.

Engine

The kit engine is all chrome and fits together very well with very little flash. I decided to use a nCovair engine from my parts box for this build mostly because I had a set of big sand paddle tires that I was itching to use.

Chassis

The typical VW chassis is a wonder in simplification and the parts in the kit go together easily.

Interior

There’s not much to a dune buggy interior. The kit seats looked a trifle small to me, so I substituted a pair of bomber seats from my stock. This buggy was made to play in the sand so there is no carpeting or upholstery. I modified the kit rollbar and tied it into the front support bar from the kit. The dashboard was left out so the tachometer was mounted on the steering column. The kit offers a couple versions for the rear seat area – a bench seat or panels to cover up the seating area.

For fans of US Naval Aviation and those fascinated with the Cold War, an incomparable weapon system and platform pairing was the F-14 Tomcat with the AWG-9 radar and the AIM-54 Phoenix missile. The AIM-54 was the long range fangs of the F-14 that gave the aircraft the capability to engage the Soviet Naval Aviation threat and its vast arsenal of anti-ship cruise missiles at very long range. It is ironic that the weapon system developed for the F-111B should end up in the Tomcat, the plane Grumman designed to supplant the faltering Navy F-111. There was and has been no equal to the missile. The Iranians used it to deadly effect in the Iran-Iraq war and it was so highly regarded, it was copied by the Soviet Union for pairing with the Mig-31.

Thanks again to Ross at SAC for providing IPMS USA this review set, one of what must be by now hundreds of sets he provides for the modelling community. I’m a prolific convert to them!

The Italeri B-57 series, released in the late 1980’s, was a serious jump forward for the modeling community. The only other kits at the time were modified from existing British Canberra kits with the “fish bowl” canopy. The introduction of the B-57 with it’s front and back canopy for the U.S. variants was most timely.

The only problem with the kit was the nose gear was a bit too far extended for ground operation, as the B-57 has a “nose down” attitude when at rest, loaded or not. In order to correct this, one had to cut part of the oleo out, and re-glue the gear together with epoxy or superglue. Some even resorted to installing a pin through the strut, which worked well.