This is a very nice kit with lots of parts - the engineering and fit is excellent. It’s a tedious build, but the instructions are very clear and the parts fit great.
This masking set is designed for Eduard’s L-39 Albatros kits and includes masks for all three sections of the canopy and for the main gear tires. As with all of Eduard’s mask sets, the fit of the masks is excellent as long as you take a little time to line them up.
For the main canopy sections, the set provides masks for the outlines of the canopy frames. and the instructions tell you to fill in the rest with liquid mask. As there is a lot of extra material on the mask set outside of the pieces to be used, I instead cut small pieces from the extra tape and used it to fill in the rest of the canopies. On interesting inclusion are masks for the clear divider section that goes between the cockpits. I did not use it as I left this piece out until final construction of the kit. I’m not sure how I would have gotten the mask off if I had used it and installed the part prior to painting.
This set is a beautiful pair of brass wing mounted pitot tubes for the Eduard L-39 Albatros kit. As shown in the photos, the kit pitots are very basic straight pieces of sprue with no taper or refinement. The Master Model replacements accurately capture the different diameters of the Albatros’pitot tubes, which range from fairly wide at the wing leading edge, then stepping down two sizes to a nice point at the tip.
Upon opening the box you are presented with 4 sprues of grey and 1 sprue of clear plastic, a sheet of decals, an 8 page instruction fold out and a 4 page color & markings guide. The plastic is nicely molded with fine recessed lines, no flash and just a few pin marks. The clear parts a thin and very clear. The decals are in register and look very nice.
Having flown the AH-1G, Q, Mod S, Prod S and Prod S (ECAS) while on active duty with the U.S. Army, I am always drawn to any version of the AH-1. It is truly an exciting aircraft to fly and it just looks plain wicked! The aircraft has been around since 1966 and the AH-1Z is the latest incarnation of that airframe, and tends to make you think it’s going to be around much longer, still. And Kitty Hawk has done a great job of presenting us with a detailed model of the Marines’ newest helicopter. And, our very own Floyd Werner was involved in the design and production of this kit from the very beginning. Thanks go to Floyd for all of his time and efforts to produce this kit. Now, if he can just convince them to do a G Model or F model in 1/48 or 1/35, we’ll be on a roll.
The Kitty Hawk AH-1Z was ready for decals.
So, on to WW Decals 48-08. One word of caution; decide which aircraft you want to model BEFORE you paint! Floyd gives you eight different choices of aircraft, and there is something different about the color demarcation lines or non-skid paint or patches of other color paint on each aircraft. I didn’t have that forethought, so the end result was there was one aircraft that I could depict, and that was NO. 41 of HMM-268 (REIN). The sheet also contains two sets of common markings.
Flying Colors Aerodecals has updated their 1/48 Swedish National Insignia sheet for the recent explosion in Swedish aircraft from Tarangus (Saab Lansen and Viggen), Special Hobby (He 115), and Pilot Replicas (Saab J-21). See the table below for what it contains, but you can do anything from an Avro Lancaster to Hughes 300. The instructions provide a guide to insignia size for 62 different aircraft to cover your wings and fuselage. If you are in to ‘What-If” or fantasy, the sky is the limit.
Thank you to Hong Kong Models for providing an innovative and exceptional kit representing a legendary Royal Air Force aircraft, the first kit in a “Mossie, The Wooden Wonder” series. Thank you also to the IPMS Reviewer Corps staff members who do the hard work behind the scenes, getting us kits to review and publishing our work.
This review is last of a two-part review. In this review you will find a brief build summary and conclusion, followed by detailed build log and reference list.
The most striking aspect of the kit is the stunning one-piece molding of the wing, horizontal tail fins, and both forward and aft fuselage components. I can summarize the importance of this molding approach by saying that I had very little seam filling to do, both because of the minimal number of seams present and the excellent fit in nearly all cases.
Flying Colors Aerodecals has updated their 1/72 Swedish National Insignia sheet for the recent explosion in Swedish aircraft from Tarangus (Saab Tunnan), Special Hobby (J 9, J 28, J J 21 and J 21R), and Airfix (J 8 Gladiator, J 26 Mustang, J 28 Vampire, and S 31 Spitfire). See the table, below for what it contains, but you can do anything from an Avro Lancaster to Hughes 300. The instructions provide a guide to insignia size for 62 different aircraft to cover your wings and fuselage. If you are in to ‘What If” or fantasy, the sky is the limit.
Following the Second World War, the United States Army developed requirements for a modern armored and mobile anti-aircraft platform to deploy with armored and infantry forces. Filling that requirement was the M42 Duster. Based on the M41 Walker Bulldog light tank platform and armed with the Bofors M2A1 dual 40mm anti-aircraft cannon, the M42 became the mainstay of mobile armored anti-aircraft support for both the U.S. Army and Marine Corps from 1953 through the Vietnam War. 3700 Dusters were produced and served with several allied nations in addition to the United States
