UPDATED REVIEW

This release by SAC provides replacement white metal landing gear for the Kitty Hawk 1/48 Su-34 kit. While white metal is softer than cast brass, the main struts and nose struts are quite sturdy in this set and will hold up if a lot of weight is added to the model. This release by SAC is a replacement for the kit landing gear, both the main gear and the nose gear. These parts are not a copy of the kit parts it is engineered from build-ups of the kit parts and then cast. As a result, this set has fewer parts than if you built the landing gear out of the box. The gear is engineered to incorporate some plastic parts from the Kitty Hawk kit. Unlike past SAC sets I have reviewed in the past, these parts have been cleaned up and do not show any mold lines.

The Aircraft

The Douglas C-133 Cargomaster was the only turboprop powered strategic airlifter for the US Air Force. The 50 C-133s in service were built from 1956 to 1960. They were designed to carry large and heavy cargo and were superior to the preceding C-124 Globemaster in that they were faster, easier to load and could carry larger loads. One of the duties of the C-133 was delivery of strategic missiles, the Atlas, Titan, and Minuteman, being faster and safer than over the road. C-133s also delivered Atlas, Titan, and Saturn missiles to the launch pads for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs.

When the C-5 came out in 1971, the C-133s were quickly taken off inventory, as most of them had reached their service limits for hours flown.

Pen and Sword has published another tome in David Doyle's Images of War series of books. This most recent volume covers the M65 Atomic Cannon. Should you be unaware of this series of books, David Doyle gathers together an immense number of rare and often times never before published photos on the selected subject. There are well written and informative captions for each and every photo.

For those that may be unfamiliar with the M65 Atomic Cannon there is a vintage film, produced by the U.S. Army, that highlights the cannon and associated vehicles. And if modeling the M65 is in your future this video may even give you a few ideas for displaying this enormous piece of artillery.

Following a brief introductory chapter on the history of large caliber, long ranged artillery, David Doyle's M65 Atomic Cannon is divided into five chapters:

The Model

The F-15E Strike Eagle is a development of the F-15. The concept of the Strike Eagle was to produce a bomber aircraft which also had fighter capability. The biggest visual differences between the E model and earlier F-15s are the two-seat cockpit and the addition of conformal fuel tanks on the sides of the fuselage.

This F-15E is a reissue of a kit previously sold as part of a multi-kit collection from F-Toys which contained an AV-8 Harrier, An A-10 Thunderbolt II and an F-15E. The kit is designed to have the parts pressed together, with little or no glue needed. As such, there is some filing and sanding required to get an acceptable fit. You get two aircraft in the box, and decals for 3 planes.

Assembly

The assembly is pretty simple. The seats are glued in the cockpit, the instrument panel is inserted, and the cockpit assembly is placed between the forward fuselage halves. I glued the fuselage parts together. This was a mistake.

Introduction

This kit was released at the end of 2018 and features resin crew figures, photo etch details, and marking options for seven jets, including two from Russia, one from Bangladesh, and four company demo aircraft. There are almost more sprues of weapons then there are of the actual aircraft, included are Kab-500kr, Kab-500Kl, Kab-500se, Kab-1500-Kl, Kab-1500-Kr, Kab-1500-se, KH-29L, KH-29T, KH-31, KH-58, and three versions of the KH-25. It’s almost worth buying the kit just for the weapon sprues! The kit looks impressive in the box.