Steve Ginter’s Lockheed F-94 Starfire is one of three of the latest in his Air Force Legends series. This edition is in their standard 8.5” x 11” format softbound publication that is 160 pages (excluding covers). I counted 406 photographs (15 in color) along with 82 drawings and 63 insignias.

Author Alan C. Carey is a noted military historian who was born in Orange County, California in a career military family. Carey got to Texas as soon as he could and achieved his Baccalaureate and Masters degree at Southwest Texas State. His interest in military aviation is primarily due to his father’s service from 1942-1966. Carey’s research on his father resulted in his father (and two members of his crew) receiving Distinguished Flying Crosses and Air Medals for their WWII service with VB-109. He ended up serving in the Marines as a machine gunner and in the Army Reserve ass a Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Defense Specialist.

If you are building a 1/32 diorama of a modern USAF aircraft, these two Crew Chiefs would be a perfect addition. Having one or both of these figures would make the diorama “come alive”.

In the package, you get two figures, molded in resin, consisting of five parts. One figure is in the “Parade Rest” position, which is usually the pose that Crew Chiefs take when a jet is ready to taxi out. This figure comes as one piece on a runner. The runner is at the bottom of his boots. I found the resin to be very easy to cut with an X-acto style saw. One word of caution here – cut off slightly below the soles of the boots, and then sand the bottoms of the boots using sandpaper mounted on a flat surface. By doing this, he will stand upright without using any glue.

The KH-29 (NATO: AS-14 'Kedge') is a Soviet air-to-surface missile with a range of 10–30 km designed for hard-to-hit targets such as reinforced concrete aircraft shelters, runways, reinforced concrete bridges and shall ships. It has a large warhead of 320 kg and can be fitted with a variety of seeker heads/guidance systems such as laser, infrared, active radar or TV guidance. The missile is typically carried by tactical aircraft such as the Su-17M3/4, Su-24M, Su-25TM/SM, Su-30, Su-34, Su-35, MiG-27M/K MiG-29SMT and the MiG-31.

Hauler produces photo-etched and resin upgrade sets for armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), airplanes, cars, railway vehicles, and dioramas. They also produce a few resin kits. Their products are in most of the common scale sizes, 1/72, 1/48, and 1/35, but they also produce a number of other items in common railroad hobbyist scales.

The kit for this review is a set of sharply cast resin Dragon’s Teeth. Dragon’s Teeth are those square concrete pyramids, most often associated with the Siegfried Line in Germany during World War II. However, these types of fortifications were used in many countries, other than Germany in World War II, and continued to be used today around the world. The idea behind these formations was to create an obstacle to slow the advance of enemy AFVs, or to channel those vehicles into prepared kill zones where anti-tank units waited in ambush.

This is a nice photoetch set for the ICM Ju 88A-4. This set adds a lot of addition detail to the exterior and make it look even better.

The photo etch parts are for the:

• Landing gear details
• Engine and engine mount details
• Land gear bay details
• Engine bay doors

In the packet is:

• 1 large photoetch sheet
• 1 clear film sheet
• 1 instruction sheet

Summary

This is great photoetch set to bring a lot of additional details to this very good kit. The engine parts are great as the engine access panels can be left open. The only issues I found was with the rear wheel bay parts which need to be carefully installed. Also the side brackets that install in the land gear bay are trick when you mount the engine and gear bays to the wing and can pop out.

With that being said the set adds some realistic detail.

History

The J2M2 Raiden (Jack) was designed to achieve a high rate of climb in order to intercept incoming bombers. The aircraft went into full scale production in 1943 and early models included two cowl 7.7mm machine guns and 20mm wing cannons. Later versions omitted the cowl guns and relied on the heavy wing armament instead. It was used extensively late in the war as a bomber interceptor and proved to be one of favorite aircraft of Japanese pilots for this task. There were a total of about 500 aircraft built by the end of World War II and only one surviving example of this aircraft today located at the Planes of Fame Museum in Chino, CA.

This is a very nice Photo Etch set for the ICM JU 88A-4 Kit. This set adds a lot of extra detail to the interior of the kit, plus additional exterior parts as a bonus.

The photo etch parts are for the:

• Cockpit side panels
• Instrument panel, pedals, radio equipment and various control details,
• AMMO Magazine boxes, Bullet belts, stowage bins, and Bomb sight,
• Machine guns handles, sights and mounts

In the Packet is;

Many thanks to the Hauler Brengun Company and the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to review this excellent detailing accessory set. Hauler Brengun is a recent contributor to the IPMS Reviewer system and I am very pleased to report on my experience with these very nice detailing accessories: star-type tie-down points for flight decks of all kinds.

Tie-down points are a ubiquitous feature anywhere on a wide ship’s deck where anchor points are required. The points are often difficult to scratch build and detail effectively, making Brengun’s photoetch tie-down points a welcome addition for anyone building display platforms.

The Mc.202 "Folgore" was the first fully modern (by WWII standards) Italian fighter, and from 1941 onwards, was the best Italian fighter until the arrival of the superb Mc.205 in 1943.

The lines of the aircraft, together with the variety of camouflages it wore, makes it an interesting subject for modelers. Having accurate line drawings, showing panel lines and rivet detail is a good resource for those modelers looking to super detail their next project.

This booklet has 4 pages, all of them fold out (given the size of them, I had to take some pictures in addition to some scans), printed double side with the following line drawings:

One page A3 size for 72^nd scale drawings:

Hasegawa has re-boxed their well-known A6M2b in 1/48 scale. Despite being an “old” mold (at least 10-yr, if not a bit more), the parts still hold really well, with no flash anywhere, petite and fine details, recessed panel lines and perfectly molded parts.

Construction, as usual begins with the cockpit. The only thing I decided to add was to drill the lightening holes in the seat and to add a pair of Eduard IJN steel seatbelts to it. The rest of the cockpit is straight out of the box, down to the decal used for the instrument panel. I was impressed by how good it looks when completed.

I departed from the instructions a bit after finishing the cockpit. Instead of adding the cockpit to a fuselage side, I actually glued the fuselage sides together and then I added the cockpit from underneath. I could see the fuselage bulging a little bit when I introduced the fuselage from underneath. Careful sanding of the cockpit bottom piece prevented the fuselage from bulging.

Background

‘The Baron and his Funfdecker Fokker’ is a re-release of the classic H-190 kit that was released in 1971. It has been re-released through the years several times as kit number 7236 and now here as 1735. This kit was originally part of the Deal’s Wheels (named after artist Dave Deal) series that primarily focused on car caricatures (13 of them), but a companion kit was issued with it under the title ‘Lucky Pierre of the Lafayette Escadrille’ featuring Pierre hanging on to the upper wing of an inverted Nieuport 17. There were also two WWII era airplane caricatures with the ‘Weiner Moldy and his Blown Messa-Schnitzel 109’ and ‘Flt. Lft. Rif Raf & his Spitsfire’. Now, less you think, that these might not have been real, there were actually four show cars produced as life-sized versions of Dave Deal’s model designs. If you get bored, check out the website: http://treswright.vervehosting.com/ .

David Doyle’s latest book continues to expand on Squadron Signal’s long standing In Action series that initiated back in 1971. This is actually the third book to cover the A-26/B-26 Invader in the In Action series. Jim Mesko authored the first in 1984 (1037) followed by Jim Mesko in 1993 (1134), both of which are out of print. This edition by David Doyle adds considerably to the material provided in the first two. Veteran illustrator Don Greer provides the color artwork for the full page length color profiles within this tome. Todd Sturgell provides the line illustrations that depict the differences between variants.