Once upon a time there was a guy named Rob Ferreira and he was a TreadHead. Unfortunately, unlike most TreadHeads, Rob just didn’t enjoy building a military vehicle and weathering it. Nope that was too easy. What Rob liked to do was take a military vehicle to it’s final resting place. Be it as a monument on display in the open, an old forgotten wreck sitting in some wooded area all but forgotten about, a vehicle destroyed by some catastrophe, or a vehicle sitting in a vehicle track park in Afghanistan.

This last scenario is what actually got the engine compartment started. Rob wanted to create more than one vehicle with this empty engine bay. He chummed up to his friend Steve Reid of Celticwerks and after much back door shenanigans and blacks ops dealings there was some magical agreement that got Rob to do the masters and Steve to create the molds for the rest of us lowly TreadHeads to benefit from this teaming.

The line of Supermarine racers, designed to attack and eventually acquire the Schneider Trophy for Seaplanes, actually began with the S.4, a mid-wing cantilever monoplane with amazing aerodynamic form for its time, 1925. This floatplane racer was sent to the United States for the eighth Schneider Cup races at Baltimore, where it suffered a number of mishaps before it finally was wrecked when the pilot lost control, fortunately with no injuries. The race was won by Lt. Jimmy Doolittle, with the backup Gloster III placing second.

Every so often as a reviewer, you end up with a product that wasn’t quite what you thought it was. Thus was the start of this, where I had volunteered to review this new set from Aires covering A-7 landing gear bays in 1/48. However I thought they were for the Hasegawa kit, but alas, they are for the Hobbyboss kit! Knowing this occasionally happens to us as modelers, where we walk out of store with the latest aftermarket treasure only to find it’s for the other manufacturer’s kit, I set about to see how this set would fit in the Hasegawa 1/48 A-7E.

Wow, just looking at this piece has given me a re-found respect for you Braille-scale builders! I don’t see how you can do it. I have enough troubles bending and gluing photo-etched parts. I will learn to start soldering them soon. Can’t even imagine trying to do it 1/72 scale. That is an issue anyone that buys this kit will need to overcome.

Mini World appears to be a relatively new company or at least a new off shoot from a company in the Ukraine. There were many companies that carried their line (all overseas) but only Hannants had this particular item listed on their website. Mini World does not have a website of its own. Their items are pretty impressive. They currently have 18 different machine guns on the market. Most are for WWI aircraft but I did also notice two different DShK kits available as well.

Most Dragon models today are a collection of old sprues and new sprues added to create a new kit variant. In this case, Dragon has done so and in this case, redid the areas that had zimmerit applied. This being said, you have many options that need to be reviewed and decided on before you start this kit.

Steps 1, 2, & 3 - Lower Hull

As with most armor kits, the first step is the running gear. Remember those choices I mentioned in the paragraph above, well, here is the first one. You have a choice of two slightly different drive sprockets. The second choice is between the end caps over the bogie springs, and the third is the choice of mufflers.

The instructions give you two sets of muffler and you will need to drill out some locating holes depending on which muffler type you have chosen.