History

(From the Hasegawa site) On December 7th, 1941, Japanese fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers devastated the US fleet at anchor in Pearl Harbor. Militarily, it was a resounding success. Most of America's battleship force was either burning or on the bottom and the Japanese strike force was barely bloodied. On December 8th, Roosevelt gave his speech and asked for a declaration of war. An entire nation woke up on the 9th and went to war by the millions. Now, 75 years since the day, Hasegawa brings you a three-kit set of aircraft from the IJN Carrier Akagi.

A feature that you can quickly notice on the Mil-24 Hind is the complicated DUAS Probe. Although Monogram made a valiant effort in molding the Mil-24 DUAS Probe with its four separate vanes and the JakB-12.7 four barrel machine gun, the limits of the injection molding process come into play. This Master Model set provides a quantum leap over any previous attempt to portray the Hind DUAS Probe and the JakB-12.7 machine gun. The kits available for this set include the original new tool Monogram 1987 release (kit 5819), that has also been released by Revell (kits 4462, 85-5856, and 4942), and Mini Hobby Models (kit 10; 2004). Master also offers this set in 1/72 and 1/35 should you desire.

Porsche is one of the premiere names in racing and sports cars in the world. This limited edition model of the Trust Racing Team’s Porsche 962C comes from Hasegawa and is a faithful reproduction of the real thing.

The kit contains 40 white plastic pieces on six runners, one white plastic car body, 12 clear pieces, four black axle retainers, and four rubber tires. There are several extra clear plastic and white plastic parts intended to create versions of the Porsche 962 that are different from the subject of this kit.

I highly recommend painting all of the kit’s parts prior to beginning any assembly. The only exception would be the parts used to build the airfoil on the back of the car, and that is due to a fit issue with the airfoil parts. Also recommended is to leave off the small exterior parts (windshield wiper, rear view mirrors, etc.) for last, to avoid breakage.

Eduard has an outstanding line of F6F Hellcat models in both Profipack and Weekend boxings and it has released photoetch frets for the Weekend line as a stand-alone item. The Weekend models have only plastic parts (as opposed to the Profipack boxes), but at times you might want to enhance the look of them by adding some photoetch, hence the Weekend Photoetch frets. Often they only cover the cockpit, the part number tends to be low, and the parts require limited bending, hence being a simplified version of the full photoetch fret of the Profipack package.

In particular, this fret is devoted to the night-fighter version of the Hellcat used during the last few years of WWII. Note that the instrument panel (IP) includes a visor/screen for the radar. In addition to an IP, you also get cockpit side detail and seatbelts, making for a very nice and busy cockpit.

Description

The Supermarine Spitfire is not only one of the most famous British icons, but it is arguably the most widely-recognized and popular aircraft in the history of aviation. For many generations, it was said to be ‘every schoolboy’s dream’ to fly a Spitfire, and Flying the Icon: Spitfire aims to give the reader an insight into what that requires.

To mark the 80th anniversary of the first flight of Prototype K5054 on 5 March 1936, author Jarrod Cotter presents something entirely different from the previously published histories of the Spitfire. Having spent a great deal of time talking to Spitfire pilots past and present, attending flight operations briefings and Spitfire pilot training courses, he has used his ‘insider’s’ perspective to produce a book solely on flying this most iconic of all fighters.