A little background about the car the kit represents:

It was the MP4/2C that McLaren introduced to the 1986 F1 Grand Prix. The McLaren MP4/2 was designed by John Barnard for the 1984 season. The McLaren MP4/2C was the updated version powered by a TAG-Porsche 1.5 litre V6 twin turbo engine with carbon monocoque chassis. A. Prost and K. Rosberg were the drivers. Rosberg ran a one-off livery in yellow/white, different from the common red/white livery, and was successful in attracting the attention of the fans and had a huge promotion effect.

The kit gives you markings to make the car driven by either driver. Looking at the kit, there are 80% new tooled parts to produce the car as in the 1986 Portuguese Gran Prix and includes details such as the suspension and cockpit, as well as the TAG-Porsche V6 twin turbo engine.

History

The Yakovlev UT-3 was designed as a training aircraft to offer instruction to pilots of multi-engined aircraft, gunners, bombardiers, and radio operators. Construction was mainly of wood, with fabric covering and some steel tubing. Imported French Renault 6Q engines were used on the prototypes, but production models probably had a Voronezh MV-6, a Russian copy of the French powerplant. The prototypes first flew in 1938, and some were equipped with armament, 7.62 mm machine guns and bombs, but production models were unarmed. Production began at two plants, No. 272 at Kazan, and No. 135 at Leningrad. Only a small number, around thirty, had been produced when the authorities decided to use combat aircraft for this type of training, so further production was cancelled.

C'est une magnifique publication, riche en prose et en photographie. Présentée en français, mon manque de maîtrise du français me fait passer à côté de la qualité de la prose, mais la photographie ne nécessite pas de traduction précise.

In English - This is a magnificent publication, rich in prose and photography. Presented in the French language, my lack of command of French means that I am missing out on the quality of the prose, but the photography and the captions for the images does not require precise translation.

While the book is in the French language, some ability to read and understand French would be extremely helpful. My command of French is, at best, that of a six-year old. But even with a remarkably disappointing ability to speak and write in French, I found that the captions of the photographs were not at all difficult to roughly translate and to understand. When all else fails, one can seek an online translation tool.

There is probably no more well-known figure from the Great War, or more written about or discussed, than the infamous Red Baron- Manfred von Richthofen. The original ringmaster of the Flying Circus, his record stands for itself and no plane from that war stands out more from historians down to watchers of Snoopy and his antics in his Sopwith doghouse. This thin book at 157 pages is filled with excellent clear photographs of von Richthofen from his childhood up through his career to his bitter end over enemy lines. More on that later.