The air campaigns of the Yom Kippur War (October 6-25, 1973) and their accompanying attrition rates encouraged the Israeli Air Force (IAF) to consider how best to augment and later replace its existing fleets of Dassault Mirage and McDonnell Douglas F-4 fighter aircraft. They faced a choice between quantity in the near term versus quality in the far term: whether to build more Israeli Aircraft Industry Kfirs and buy additional F-4Es from the U.S. immediately, or to acquire something more advanced, even if that took longer – and cost more money.

This set is designed to be used on Hasegawa F-14 Tomcat kits. The set consists of 2 resin ramps, replacing the kit’s molded on ramps. The title states that the parts are the ECS (environmental control system) exhaust grills, however, in reality they are the fixed bleed doors which allow excess air to be vented out of the intakes, especially at higher airspeeds when the movable ramps deploy to restrict the airflow down the intakes and keep the air subsonic when it hits the front of the engines.

This set is designed to be used on Academy’s new F-14Tomcat kits. The set consists of a pair of drop-in replacements for kit parts F15/F17 and F17/F18 which make up the rear part of the intake trunks immediately in front of the engines. Academy did a nice job in trying to reduce the seam between the upper and lower parts, however, the Quickboost parts eliminate the seam completely.

Both intakes are nicely molded and as the intakes are handed the pour stubs clearly indicate which the left intake is and which is the right one. I marked “L” and “R” on the resin parts with a Sharpie before removing them from the pour stubs under the KISS principal, even though I know that they will not fit if swapped, having just completed building the kit.

The parts are easily removed with razor saw and I used some 600-grit sandpaper to clean up the cut ends. The cast parts include the indentations for mounting the kit engine faces, so installation will be easy.

AOA Decals is a relatively new aviation decal with an impressive variety in 1/32, 1/35, 1/48, 1/72 and 1/144 scale. Their product line primary focus is Vietnam era aircraft. Although a relatively young company, their quality and attention to detail rivals all other decal companies on the market. The decal set comes with one large decal sheet and a four-page, full color instruction sheet.

This decal set covers three (Vertical lift) US Marine aircraft, two helicopters and one jet. All three aircraft are assigned to HMM-264 (REIN) “Black Knights which are elements of the 26^th Marine Expeditionary unit (MEU) USS Bataan (LHD-5) between the years 2006 to 2007. There are options for seven different aircraft, one AV-8B Night Attack, AV-8B+, Three choices CH-53E and two choices on the CH-46E.

This set is designed to provide replacement parts for Italeri’s 1/32 two-seat F-104 kits. As with most of SAC’s landing gear sets, the metal parts are intended to be one-for-one replacements for the kit parts. The centerpiece of the set is a new single piece main gear section including both left and right main gear struts with attached retraction arms and gear door actuators. The set also provides white metal replacements for the hydraulic lines on the main gear struts.

There are four parts to the nose gear – the strut, two retraction arms and what I assume is the nose gear steering unit.