Many thanks to Mr. Ross MacMillan of Scale Aircraft Conversions and the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to try this neat substitute and replacement set for the Kitty Hawk UH-1D. I am pleased to report on another sweet add-on and upgrade from this company. The target kit has excellent detail and complexity, with a bit of a tendency to be a tail sitter. The addition of heavier metal skid parts eliminates the tendency of the model to “sit back”.

The 6 white-metal parts arrived in a blister pack, backed by the distinctive SAC company logo. The weight of the parts is very noticeable. Some parts are on sprues and all are easily cleaned up for painting. The parts require very little buffing, cleanup and polishing. Some barely-noticeable seams readily retreat at the advance of a #11 blade! My incautious elbow on the bench slightly bent and twisted the parts in the package. See the package image for the scene of the accident.

“Sink the Bismarck” was the very first war movie I ever saw as a young lad, with my Scottish Father telling me it involved “the greatest naval engagement undertaken by the Royal Navy in the Second World War”. The Bismarck, one of two Bismarck-class battleships laid down by Nazi Germany’s Kriegsmarine prior to the outbreak of the Second World War, was fast and extremely powerful, armaments wise. She had a very short career, undertaking only one offensive operation, in May 1941, codenamed Rheinübung. Together with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, Bismarck sailed into the Atlantic on a mission to block shipping carrying supplies to Britain.

This is the third set of Amigo exhaust nozzles I’ve reviewed, and this set exhibits the high quality I saw previously. It is designed for Hasegawa’s 1/72 scale Su-35S Flanker and is a “drop-in” for the kit’s exhaust pieces. However, Amigo chose to represent only the articulated position of the exhausts while the kit has the option of both articulated and in-line positions.

History

The Hasegawa 1/72 Ki-61 dates back to the early 1970s and is still a nice kit, but basic. CMK has come out with some detail sets to spice up these old kits.

What You Get

4 crisply molded resin parts along with a 9 X 3.5 folded sheet of instructions. These parts are very fragile so please be careful when handling them.

Construction

The first thing you need to do is remove the flaps from kit part B10 and thin the undersides of the corresponding areas of parts B11 & 12. This 2nd part is where I totally messed this up due to my not paying attention. I removed the areas totally and this made it almost impossible to build. I managed to get these on and make them look halfway decent, but it could have and should have been better. With the exception of my mistake, these went on pretty easy and look very nice.

Background

Excerpted from Wikipedia:

The M54 5-ton 6×6 truck (G744) was the basic cargo model of the M39 Series truck. It was designed to transport a 10,000 lb., 14-foot long cargo load off-road in all weather. In on-road service, the load weight was doubled. The M54 was the primary heavy cargo truck of the U.S. Army and U.S. Marine forces during the Vietnam War and was also used by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and ARVN forces.

The M54 truck was used as the base vehicle for Gun Trucks during the Vietnam War. Field-applied armor added protection to the Gun Trucks, and armament consisted of various combinations of weapons including M60s, .50-calibre machine guns, XM 134 miniguns, and anti-aircraft weapons such as the quad mount .50 cal. machine guns. Early 2 ½ ton trucks proved inadequate leading to their replacement by M54 five-ton cargo trucks.