Hauler, a small company out of Czechoslovakia, continues to add to its list of quality aftermarket and modeling supply products; this time with a package of four 50 gallon steel barrels in 1/35th scale.

The package contains a single baggie containing four barrels mounted on backing blocks. No stencils and/or decals are included. The barrels are single-piece affairs, eliminating the need to remove that pesky seam line found on standard two-part barrels included in many armor kits.

The barrels are attached at one end to the backing block, and while the attachment is significant, the rim of the barrel keeps things pretty much in place during removal. A lot of resin dust is produced during this process, and unless you plan to carefully sand the cut end and scribe detail into it, you are going to lose the use of that end of the barrel on your model or diorama.

History

In the early 1960s, the US Army’s Howze Board recommended testing new forms of mobility to make the soldier “free from the tyranny of terrain.” The result was the 11th Air Assault Division, to be rechristened the First Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and sent to Vietnam in 1965. Rather than moving to combat by truck or by foot march, as in wars past, the Cav rode in helicopters, lots of helicopters. Those many choppers, from OH-13s and OH-6s to CH-47s and UH-1s needed crew members and door gunners. This figure represents one of those aviators.

I hate masking canopies, but nothing detracts from a good looking model like a poorly painted canopy. The easiest way to do it right is with canopy masks specifically designed for the kit.

The latest offering from Eduard is for the Trumpeter MiG-23MLD. This set provides masks for not only the canopy but the wheels. The canopy masks provide both the outline for the rear portion of the canopy and whole masks for the front of the canopy sections.

All the wheels are provided with masks. There Heads Up Display has two masks for it as well.

This set is very complete and for the price I can save myself lots of headaches and time. These are a great accessory for your kit. If you haven’t tried them you really owe it to yourself to give it a go.

Highly recommended

This bridge kit is part of Academy’s nine kit series of models of Leonardo Da Vinci’s inventions. These kits are simple assembly with a limited number of parts, but are good instructional models exploring Da Vinci’s inventions.

The kit does not require any painting or cements for construction.

The arch bridge designed by Leonardo Da Vinci uses a self-supporting arch concept to distribute weight through the full curve of the arch.

The plastic parts are molded in brown plastic and include three plastic sprues plus 2 base pieces. The kit includes 24 plastic parts, instructions, and a lightweight cardboard box to store the parts. The kit has two levels of assembly, Elementary and Advanced depending upon the span length of the bridge. The instructions include some information about bridge types and design.

Short History

The History of the Eagle is as described by Great Wall Hobby: The McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) F-15 Eagle is an American twin-engine, all-weather tactical fighter designed by McDonnell Douglas to gain and maintain air superiority in aerial combat. It is among the most successful modern fighters, with over 100 aerial combat victories. Following reviews of proposals, the United States Air Force selected McDonnell Douglas' design in 1967 to meet the service's need for a dedicated air superiority fighter. The Eagle first flew in July 1972, and entered service in 1976. The Multi-Stage Improvement Program (MSIP) is a joint program carried out by Boeing and the USAF's Warner Robins Logistics Center in Georgia. Under MSIP, upgrades were progressively incorporated onto the production line and then retrofitted to earlier production aircraft.

Hauler, a small company out of Czechoslovakia, continues to add to its list of quality aftermarket and modeling supply products; this time with a package of eight U.S. Army 75mm ammunition boxes in 1/35th scale.

The package contains a single baggie containing all the resin parts needed, mounted on backing blocks. Four of the boxes are empty with separate lids, with the other four made of solid resin. All contain fine wood grain and represent standard USA ammunition crates. Delicate ‘rope’ handles are included for all of the crates, but stencils and/or decals are not.

Eduard has come out with several photo etch sets for the 1/32 Scale HK Mk.IV Mosquito. This set provides new replacement interior panel parts, control levers, side panel parts, bulkheads, rudder pedals, bomb sight, and other interior details. The best part about this set is that most of the panels are pre-painted and ready to be placed with a sticky back adhesive already applied.

The instructions are quite adequate to provide detailed information on part numbers and placement.

Developed as another Sidewinder for the U.S. Air Force, the AIM-9J was the follow-up to their E-model, and was based on the U.S. Navy AIM-9B. The AIM-9J first saw service in the skies over Vietnam in July 1972 during Operation Linebacker. It introduced the use of some solid-state components, and being equipped with a longer burning motor, the AIM-9J could remain in flight for 40 seconds. Hercules/Aerojet produced 6700 of the missiles, both new, and from re-purposed AIM-9B missiles. The AIM-9J measured 10 feet in length, 22 inches across the rear fins, had a diameter of 5 inches, and weighed in at 170 pounds. The AIM-9J was considered the first missile capable of use in a dogfight as it could be launched at up to 7.5g. This missile is credited with aerial victories over one MiG-21, and two MiG-19 aircraft during the Vietnam War launched from F-4D Phantom II’s of the US Air Force.

Warpaint’s latest is their standard A4 format,, softbound publication that is 48 pages (excluding covers) on Convair's B-36 Peacemaker series. Featuring 99 photographs (13 in color) along with 23 of Richard J. Caruana’s color profiles, including his color centerfold of “Miss Featherweight:” a B-36H-1-CF Peacemaker. The color profiles are further enhanced with color scrap illustration of opposite sides of the fuselage as necessary to depict special markings. Nose art and other special markings are also presented enlarged to show off details.

Kev Darling starts out with the seven year development of the Peacemaker, initiating in April 1941 with the initial USAAF specification. The impact of the Pacific war on the project is highlighted as well as ample discussion of the political, financial, technical issues that prolonged the service entry of the B-36.

Eduard has come out with several photo etch sets for the 1/32 Scale, HK Mk.IV Mosquito and this is one of them. This set provides new replacement control panel parts, control levers, side panel parts, rudder pedals, bomb sight and some other interior details. This set is a copy of their 32840 Interior SA (self- adhesive, I assume) without the additional fret with bulkheads and such.

The instructions are quite adequate to provide detailed information on part numbers and placement.

Assembly is straight forward but a little fiddly. There are a bunch of very tiny parts that need to be bent and shaped. I used a hobby knife with a number 11 blade to remove the photo etch from the fret. Some of the small parts are hard to hold and glue at the same time. This makes for a time consuming and sometimes aggravating assembly. I used an ACC type glue for assembly when required.

Thank you to Unique Master Models (UMM) for generously providing an excellent tool for “field testing.” Thank you as well to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for letting me be an evaluator.

The tool is small, has a nice weight or heft in the hand, and does not flex easily. The scriber is strongly attracted to a magnet, but is not magnetic itself. The surface is highly polished. The longer deburring edge and the shorter scriber edge are sharp enough to start scribing right out of the cellophane package. The cutting edges should be easily honed as needed. The smooth sides moved easily along my steel straight edge. I pushed the limits a bit and found there was no flex in the tool that affected the “groove.” The primary tool design is for scribing lines in plastic, but I expect to discover other uses when the tool is in hand. Further, the tool has that somewhat undefinable sense of “feeling right.”

The M270 MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) was first delivered to troops in 1983 and has since been delivered to many NATO countries with over 1,300 being built. The last M270 was manufactured in 2003, when a last batch was delivered to the Egyptian Army.

DML first produced a MLRS kit in 1992. The kit was no. 3522 followed soon after by no. 3523. The major difference was the inclusion of 2 separate M26 rocket pods. Jump to 2015 and Dragon has released a “new” version of this incredible artillery piece.

In 1992, the kit suffered from several issues such as the link length track, poorly rendered road wheels, and attached support arms and shocks. This new release has not rectified any of the issues. The only difference between this kit and no. 3523 is the inclusion of three small part sprues. Do not expect “Big Foot” track as depicted on the box top. This re-issue still has the earlier style track.

This is another of those Brengun kits that is SO useful when doing a diorama. In this case, the diorama is a USN aircraft carrier deck, and the kit is the MD-3 tow tractor. Actually, the kit is TWO MD-3 tow tractors. Better value for the money.

While I was looking up the catalog reference for this kit, I found another useful item in the Brengun accessories catalog. How about a tow bar for this tractor? It’s item number BRL144115, $6.05.

The Kit

You get two of all the parts. There are two sets of resin parts to make two tractors. Also, the PE fret has all the (tiny) parts you need to make two tractors. The decal sheet has enough decals to make two tractors, as long as you don’t want the black warning stripes for the bumpers on the second kit.

All of the resin parts are nicely molded, without bubbles or excessive flash. The PE parts were nicely set up, with almost no trimming required on any of the parts.

Dragon continues to expand its “Modern Sea Power” Series, this time with the introduction of the 1/350 Zerstorer Class 1936A, with a twin 150 mm turrets.

Upon opening the box you find 18 sprues, plus two small photoetch frets and decals. There is a total of over 550 parts on this kit.

The parts are finely molded, with virtually no flash anywhere. I’ve only was able to spot a bit of flash in one sprue, around the propellers. Slide mold technology was used extensively in the kit minimizing seams and allowing multiple pieces (bridge, hull) to be molded in a single piece. It should be noted it the hull is packed with a small protector to protect the sharp bow from being damaged.

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.

The Kit

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.

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.

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.

Build Summary

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.

Background

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

The Kit

This review covers the 1957 Ford Del Rio Ranch Wagon 1:25 Scale Model Kit #85-4193. A 2015 release, this model is a collection of past offerings with refreshed trees and some brand new tooling. It is a skill level 3 kit for the 12-year and older builder, molded in 156 pieces of white, clear, transparent red and chrome pieces with waterslide decals and instructions. As you can tell from the piece count it comes with quite a few options. Two complete versions can be built; either the police wagon or a stock version. Both use a highly detailed rendition of the 312 c.i.d. Thunderbird V-8. This kit includes a separate frame for enhanced detailing along with custom wheels and disc brakes. The completed dimensions are Length: 8”, Width: 3”, Height: 2-3/8”

Construction and Detailing

I elected to build the police version of this wagon for its “cool” factor and because the kit pieces were so nicely done in a period accurate manner.

History

The Vietnam War was a helicopter war. Many of the most lasting images are of fleets of helicopters, mostly the ubiquitous UH-1 “Huey,” filling the sky. What would newsreel footage of that war be without a sound track of the “whup-whup-whup” of chopper blades?

Among the many uses the UH-1 was put to was as an early version of the gunship, the ancestor of today’s Apache. Those Huey guns took a crew of four: a commissioned or warrant officer pilot (left seat) and copilot, and two enlisted door gunner/crew chief in back. This four figure kit represents the aviators of those gunships employed in that conflict.

History

At the height of the Great Depression, aircraft executive Walter H. Beech and airplane designer T. A. "Ted" Wells joined forces to collaborate on a project to produce a large, powerful, and fast cabin biplane built specifically for the business executive. The Beechcraft Model 17, popularly known as the "Staggerwing" was first flown on November 4, 1932. During its heyday it was used as an executive aircraft, much as the private jet is now, and its primary competition were the Waco Custom Cabin and Waco Standard Cabin series of biplanes.

On the back of the seventh Fast & Furious movie release, Revell has re-released a kit born in the 2 Fast 2 Furious era, or more commonly, 2003. Responding to the tuner craze of the time, Revell released several 2’ n 1 style kits of popular imports such as the Acura Integra Type R, Mitsubishi Eclipse, and the subject of this review, the ‘99-00 Honda Civic Si coupe. Each of the the tuner-inspired kits included several aftermarket wheels, body kits, and spoilers, along with the parts to build a stock car.

Pavla Models has been putting out a lot of nice sets for older kits. I really love this because I’m one of those people that are hooked on the model kits of my childhood. This time they did a conversion for the Monogram B-36 Peacemaker. Another interesting thing about Pavla is their choice of subjects for their conversions. They picked the 20mm cannons and compartment for the front top of the aircraft. Talk about different, every time you see a model of a B-36 they all look the same, but with this conversion you have the top bay open with guns retracted.

I have several of the Modeler’s Datafiles and they are great reference books so I was looking forward to this one on the British Phantoms. I do have to say that some of the Datafile facts do need to be checked as I have found small errors in a few of them but not enough to detract from the benefit of these books from being a great addition to any reference library

As soon as I started to flick through the book I was impressed. This book has all the information a modeler needs to build a British Phantom, including a kit listing, a decal listing and an accessory/conversion listing.

The table of contents is as follows: