This book is a condensed history of the Avro Lancaster. What would come to be the mainstay of Bomber Command has its lineage traced from the beginnings of the failed Manchester design into the most famous of Britain’s WWII bombers.

The book is broken down into five chapters plus an introduction. The chronology section lasts three pages and lists all important dates from the Air Ministry specification of July 1936 that lead to the Lancaster’s development through to the 1956 retirement of the Lanc and the 1963 retirement of its follow-on the Lincoln.

The design and development chapter begins not just with the Manchester but also discusses how the development of long range bombers had been held back since the Handley Page Heyford in favor of medium ranged twins. This section takes you through how its life started slowly and disappointingly with the Manchester to being a legend for the RAF.

The U.S.S. Excelsior has been a Star Trek favorite for quite some time now – one of the most elegant designs ever made for the Star Trek universe. I didn’t notice this at first, but the designer was strongly influenced by the 1930s Art Deco Streamline Modern style, which features rounded shapes with straight fluting – quite a retro look when you stop and think about it. I remember a friend of mine, upon first seeing the Excelsior in detail, quipped “This model isn’t so much a spaceship as a fashion statement.” When you look at the extensive use of piping and other fine details, it’s hard not to see his point.

AMT released a model of this lovely ship quite some time ago – almost 20 years, if recollection does not betray me. As a hard-core Star Trek fan and modeler I built this kit when it first came out, and still have it in my collection today.

I've always had a fascination for the Russian T-54/T-55 series and have been building models of it all my life, beginning with the ancient Tamiya T-55 from the 1960's. As each new incarnation came out, I leapt on it eagerly, including the Lindberg kit, the AMT/ERTL kit all the way to the latest Takom offering.

MiniArt has been expanding its armor stable dramatically lately, with the release of a number of kits on these ubiquitous vehicles, both with and without full interiors. The T54-1 marks the transition of Russian armor development from the the T-34 through the T-44 and rather looks like a transition, with a number of aspects shared with its predecessors.

Trumpeter continues to produce a wide range of interesting and wide ranging Russian subjects. While the box says that this is the Russian AT-S Tractor, in fact, this is a two-in-one kit. Also included with the prime mover is the Soviet ML-20 152 mm howitzer Mod 1937. As with most Trumpeter kits, the box is sturdy and the sprues are individually packaged and the more fragile parts are wrapped in foam. For the prime mover there are twelve sprues, including four for the individual track links, one sprue of transparent parts and a small PE fret. There are markings for three vehicles, Russian, Finnish, and the German Democratic Republic. For this build, I chose the Finnish markings. For the artillery piece, there are nine sprues, two PE frets, a set of rubber tires and a metal gun barrel. As with most recent Trumpeter models, the parts are well molded in grey plastic, though there is some fine flash and mold lines present on the parts which take some time to clean up.

This is a re-issue by Round2 of a kit first released a few years ago by AMT.

This is a kit of the BatBoat from the movie Batman Returns, and featured in the movie climax.

In the box is:

• 1 chrome sprue
• 3 x wing parts
• 1 black sprue
• 1 upper hull section
• 1 lower hull section
• 1 cardboard fold out backdrop (based on scene from the movie)
• 1 instruction booklet

All of the 18 parts are well molded and great detail, the only issue is the large number of ejector pin marks on the rear and side wing parts. The instruction booklet is easy to follow and well-illustrated.

Construction

Stage 1, 2 and 3 is the construction of the Batboat interior and installing it into the lower hull. The interior parts were painted and some shading/weathering added to make it look sharp. This was the only painting needed on this kit.