The CBU-87 was developed on behalf of the US Air Force and became operational in the mid-1980’s replacing earlier cluster bomb munitions. The CBU-87 is designed to be a multi-purpose weapon effective against armor, soft-skinned vehicles and troops.

Eduard’s set consists of twelve resin parts, 6 canister bodies and 6 tail units. The hardest part of the whole build is cutting the parts from the casting blocks. Despite my best efforts, only about half of my cuts were straight, resulting in the need for some careful aligning of canisters and tail units in order to keep them properly lined up and then filling the resulting gaps with filler or Mr. Surfacer, depending on the size of the gaps.

Thankfully the units are overall Olive Drab, which as a dark color helps to hide some of the seams and miss-cuts.

Twobobs always makes great decals and when this scheme popped up on the review list and included and arctic scheme aggressor, I knew I wanted to review it and build and F-16 in those colors. Inside the package are markings for two 1/48th scale F-16’s from 57th Wing at Nellis AFB. This group continues making aggressor schemes to mimic the newest schemes from our potential adversaries. In this case, the two schemes involved are the Arctic scheme with light gray/medium gray/very dark gray in bands around the jet for the first scheme and the second is the splinter scheme in blues and gray. Both jets are really nice looking but I wanted to focus on the Arctic bandit scheme.

With the recent releases of the special edition F-104 kits from Eduard in 1/48 using Hasegawa plastic, Eduard has released the F-104 C2 ejection seat as a separate kit. The Lockheed C2 ejection seat was the most commonly used ejection seat for the F-104 in US service. It is a downward firing rocket propelled ejection seat.

This seat set is very simple. It contains the main seat frame, two seat options, rails, a small photoetch set and a small decal set. As this is a drop in replacement seat for the kit seat the assembly is very straight forward. Everything in the kit replaces the equivalently parts in the F-104 kit. The first step in the assembly is to remove the three large resin parts from the casting blocks, using a razor saw for this step. If you are careful minimal clean up will be needed. After clean up, wash the parts to remove the mold release agent that is often on resin parts.

Master Model of Poland produces small brass parts for detailing models, be they aircraft or ships. They have parts for aircraft in 1/32, 1/35, 1/48, 1/72, and 1/144, mostly pitot tubes, refueling probes, and gun barrels.

The pitot part is a very fine piece of brass. The piece is much finer than the kit part.

I didn’t have a 1/144 Hunter on the shelf, so this review required that I build the Revell Hunter. As long as I’m building it, I may as well do it as part of my “Suez 1956” project. That’s why the Hunter has those red and yellow stripes, negating any camouflage effect.

Pitot Installation

Once the kit was almost finished, I got out the Master Model pitot and took the pictures. It was an easy installation. Revell gives you a little notch at the wing tip, and the CA provides a bit of filler. I then painted the pitot silver. No drilling, just a bit of CA and accelerator.

Overall Evaluation

Highly recommended.

Eduard has released a full line of Hellcats in 1/48 scale, covering from the early -3, to the late -5, including night fighter versions and even Royal Navy service markings. This particular boxing is the Weekend edition of the -5(N), with neither mask nor photoetch, but with two options for decals and a small number of resin parts to make the conversion to “night fighter”.

When I opened the box I found a total of 5 sprues (one clear) and 3 small resin casting for details like radio-altimeter, exhausts, radar housing for the starboard wing and cannons with nicely casted flash dampers. FYI: the nightfighter version of the Hellcat was capable of carrying a 20 mm cannon.

A note on the sprues: one of them –the fuselage one- was molded in tan, while the rest of the sprues were molded in blue-gray. And there were two full engine cowlings, but no indication of the second cowling in the instructions. I was a bit puzzled by the different plastic colors and two cowlings.