The Kit

Joining Trumpeter’s growing fleet of prime movers, this kit is their latest addition. The AT-T is a tracked vehicle, sharing the same components as a T-54. The kit and markings are for one vehicle. The color call out sheet shows this as a parade vehicle, white rims and markings of the Soviet flag. I chose to make it a grubbier vehicle with the Soviet red star (ironically enough, left over from another Trumpeter kit). Molded in the now customary grey Trumpeter plastic, there are ten sprues in the kit of which three are the tracks and two are the rubber road wheels. It includes one fret of PE, clear parts and one sheet of decals. The parts are nicely molded, but there are some prominent mold lines on some of the smaller parts that must be taken care of.

History

Created to replace the piston-engined B-26 Invader, the twin jet engine tactical bomber B-57 Canberra was produced by US aircraft company Martin in the 1950s. Derived from the British aircraft EE Canberra it was produced in several versions to perform not only bombing but recon, electronic warfare, ground attack and dive bombing duties. The B-57B, developed for bombing missions, was the main version produced. It was characterized by the adoption of a new cockpit with two crew members arranged in tandem and under-wing hardpoints able to be armed with a wide range of weapons. The first units produced were armed with eight 12.7mm machine guns installed within the wings and later substituted with four 20mm cannons.

Shortly after Trumpeter released its new Su-33 Flanker D kit, Scale Aircraft Conversions released a replacement set for the kit landing gear. The set is comprised of five parts: two main landing gear legs, the nose strut, the nose strut retraction actuator, and the scissor link for the nose gear strut.

As with Scale Aircraft’s other sets, the parts are drop in replacements for the kit parts. After removing a slight molding seam on the parts, I polished them using a wire wheel in my battery operated Dremel tool at low speed. This works very well and results in a nice uniform finish to all of the parts.

The Jeep

The original Jeep was built by Bantam, but Ford and Willys also bid on the original contract. Due to financial problems at Bantam, the other two companies were given contracts to build Jeeps. Bantam called theirs BRC-40 Willys was the MB, the Ford was called GPW. The Jeep was a ¼ ton all-wheel drive vehicle, with a wheelbase of 80 inches and a track of 47 inches.

Willys produced 363,000 Jeeps, Ford made 280,000. We gave 51,000 to the Russians. They were used in every theater of WW2.

The Kit

The base kit is one very nicely cast piece of resin, which is almost the entire Jeep. There is a PE fret, of which 3 parts are used. There’s a decal sheet with all the markings you need. You get enough in the envelope to build two Jeeps, with PE and decals for both.

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.

This “add-on” is a single pitot tube. It’s very fine turned brass. The detail is so fine that I had to use my magnifiers to determine that there are three different diameters on the pitot, getting smaller at about 1/3 and 2/3 of the length.

The instructions are to the point:

• Remove the kit pitot from the mount.
• Drill a hole in the mount.
• Glue the new pitot in the hole using CA
• Put the mount under the F-100’s intake.

I was able to skip step 4, as the kit pitot was already mounted under the nose.