History

Osprey has published a series of books offering comparisons of competing combat aircraft of World Wars I and II, and they offer specific information on how the planes fared against each other in combat. The author brings out the fact that a combat airplane not only has technological factors to consider, but also the skill and training of the pilots as well as the development of tactics suitable for the combat situation. The best airplane flown by an inexperienced pilot might well be at a great disadvantage against a combat veteran flying a less sophisticated type. With this in mind, the author covers the subject in such a way as to give the reader a very good impression of the factors affecting combat between the types.

In addition, the author brings out the fact that these types also fought against other types, but the emphasis is on the major aircraft in question, in this case the Tempest Mk. V and the Focke Wulf FW-190D-9.

I have to say I was intrigued by this model offered by Brengun that would a great piece to add with your Japanese ground-based aircraft display base. My hopes are that I will eventually have an opportunity to try the 1/48 scale version of this accessory. J

Typical with Brengun’s other releases they provide the end user with some extremely nicely cast parts molded in a darkish grey resin. If there were any imperfections, they were not noticeable to my eye. I found the parts delicate buy not fragile. The resin was reasonably pliable making removal from the pour stubs easily achievable with a little patience. I can’t overstress to double; triple and quadruple check the instructions before removing the parts. My extinguisher nozzle assembly runs a bit shorter than it should L

Opening the package of decals you will find two large sheets of beautifully printed markings for no less than nine Corsairs These aircraft include mostly F4U-1A’s with markings for two F4U-1D’s and one late war FG-1D. There is no instruction booklet included in the package. However going to the Fundekals website you can download the instruction booklet as a PDF file. I call this an instruction booklet as it is comprised of 24 pages of Color and B&W illustrations and photographs of each of the aircraft covered on the sheet. Also in the booklet are precise instructions pointing out the various differences in each of the covered aircraft. A detailed history of each covered aircraft and its pilot is included. A really nice touch was a page covering the various different antenna arrangements. Covering, as they say, “Some stuff you might not have known”. Another page explains “New research on insignia colors in the Solomons. 1943-1944”.

I was intrigued by this model offered by Brengun that would be a great piece to add with your Japanese ground-based aircraft display base. My hopes are that I will eventually have an opportunity to try the 1/48 scale version of this accessory.

Typical with Brengun’s other releases, they provide the end user with some extremely nicely cast parts molded in a darkish grey resin. If there were any imperfections, they were not noticeable to my eye. I found the parts delicate buy not fragile. The resin was reasonably pliable making removal from the pour stubs easily achievable with a little patience. I can’t overstress to double, triple, and quadruple check the instructions before removing the parts. I had a small oops where I removed and discarded a small portion of the support frame. Thankfully I was able to recover my error with a scratch-built pump mount.

John Vojtech, the genius behind UMM-USA, gave us a nice collection of tools at the Chattanooga National Convention this year. I have the privilege of reviewing a handful of them and here’s #1.

If you’ve never used a UMM product (and why not?), they are exquisitely manufactured. This particular tool is an extremely narrow (0.8mm/0.031 inch) chisel mounted in a sturdy, contoured plastic handle. The blade tip is a grooved, wedge shape.

What’s it good for? Removing minute amounts of material in a controlled fashion – ejector pins, molded on detail that’s to be replaced, flash removal, scribing detail into small parts, etc. I have been attempting to do this with an X-Acto knife all along, now that I have this tool I can actually maneuver the cutting surface into the immediate area rather than trying to cut at multiple angles and clean up the resulting carnage <g>.