SMS Seydlitz was a battlecruiser of the German Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy), built in Hamburg. She was ordered in 1910 and commissioned in May 1913, the fourth battlecruiser built for the High Seas Fleet. She was named after Friedrich Wilhelm von Seydlitz, a Prussian general during the reign of King Frederick the Great and the Seven Years' War. Seydlitz represented the culmination of the first generation of German battlecruisers, which had started with the Von der Tann in 1906 and continued with the pair of Moltke-class battlecruisers ordered in 1907 and 1908. Seydlitz featured several incremental improvements over the preceding designs, including a redesigned propulsion system and an improved armor layout. As with the rest of the German battlecruisers that survived the war, the ship was interned in Scapa Flow in 1918. The ship, along with the rest of the High Seas Fleet, was scuttled in June 1919, to prevent her seizure by the British Royal Navy.

Kagero has released books of various aircraft in the past. This is their 12th edition of the Mongraph Specials and focuses on the FW-190 short nosed variants. The beautifully hard bound book has over 250 pages of high quality paper. It has all the hallmarks of Kagero’s other books.

There are plenty of clear, large pictures throughout the book. There are also some exquisite color profiles that are an inspiration to any would be modeler or historian. On top of that there are some first rate line drawings in the book as well as separate 1/48 and 1/32nd scale fold out drawings for the FW-190A5 and A-8 that are absolutely gorgeous. There are 1/72nd scale drawings included in the book. Now that all sounds great, so lets see if the contents match the highlights.

This set provides a pair of replacement seats for the pilot and co-pilot of a CH-53 or MH-53 Super Stallion/Sea Stallion and includes seatbelts/harnesses, the tubular frame the seat is mounted on and what appears to be add-on side armor plates for each seat.

The seats and mounting frames are cast in light grey resin. The castings are very detailed and delicate, a little too delicate as I will discuss below. The seats include a lot of details on the seat backs that could be visible if you leave the main cabin door open. I compared the seats and the mounting frames to photos I found online and ResKit did their homework as it looks accurate and in scale. The casting includes a very tiny slot at the top of the seat that the upper section of the shoulder harness passes through, but be very gentle as the resin around the slot is very thin and it is very easy to break off the headrest section – trust me!

“Master Box Ltd. has a couple nice sets of plastic figures coming out. One of which is a pair of 1/24th scale modern infantry soldiers. Typical of Master Box, their figures are normally packaged in a setting. This one is called “Our route has been changed” and has two soldiers consulting a wrist mounted GPS/map pouch. One soldier is a female, which is nice to see for a modern look to the pair, and both are armed and wearing modern gear.” Or, so says Mike Lamm from Austin Scale Modelers Society in Austin, Texas. (from the Austin club's newsletter, The Sprue Examiner). Not that he is wrong....

Background

Hauler/Brengun was founded in 1999 and produces scale plastic kits, resin kits and accessories, photo-etched details for kits and other accessories. This kit of the Scheibel S-100 Camcopter is offered in three different scales: 1/72, 1/48, and 1/32.

The Schiebel Camcopter S-100 is an Austrian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) using a rotorcraft design. The S-100 is also produced in partnership with Boeing. Powered by a 55-hp Diamond engine, the S-100 can carry a wide variety of sensors such as electro-optics, infrared, moving target indication, and synthetic aperture radar. An alternate engine that can use JP-5, Jet A-1, or JP-8 fuels instead of gasoline is also available. The S-100 has a maximum speed of 130 kn and a ceiling of 18,000 feet. Orders to date exceed 200 units.