Introduction

The U.S. Army RU-8D Seminole (not to be confused with the Piper light twin of the same name) was based on the Beechcraft Model 50 Twin Bonanza, first flown in 1952. The Army version modeled in this kit takes a civilian aircraft, strips the luxury interior out and loads the inside with radio receivers and festoons the exterior with antennas to fulfill the signal intelligence mission. Used extensively over Vietnam, the Seminole crew would home in on enemy radio transmissions with the goal of pinpointing the position of those units. These underappreciated units provided critical intelligence to units on the ground. I was pleased to see a model company honoring this often lonely and forgotten mission with this model.

This is a reprint of the original edition first published in 2010 in Veloce’s Classic Reprint Series. The author’s biography is available on the Veloce website above and is as follows: “Donald Stevens was born in the East End of London, but grew up in Haywards Heath, the Sussex market town to which he was evacuated in 1939. In his early teenage years he became fascinated by aeroplanes and other machines, and on leaving school began training as a mechanical engineer. At 19, he joined the newly-formed design consultancy Norris Brothers Ltd as its first employee and became a member of the design team for Donald Campbell’s Bluebird hydroplane (K7). Following National Service in the RAF, Donald became project coordinator for the design and construction of the Bluebird car. This is his first book.” I was unable to locate if Donald Stevens has written any subsequent books, but you can see Donald on youtube.com discussing this book.

If you really, I mean really like research, then you know the passion that comes with it. Well so does Fündekals. Their latest release is on the F4U Corsair. This is their second Corsair sheet and it is full of goodies too.

First off, did I miss something? I only got decals. There are no instructions with this sheet. No, that is the norm for Fündekals. To save printing costs, and subsequent costs to you, you can download the instruction booklet online. You can save it and/or print it. The amount of research into the booklet is worth the price of admission.

The decals themselves are printed by B.O.A. so you know they are world class. They are thin, opaque and in register. The sheets are mostly white markings but there are some colorful personal emblems included for the aircraft. The second sheet is the geometric markings for one of the subject aircraft.

IPMS/USA thanks the Eduard team once again for sending us this simple, excellent set for use with many UK fighter aircraft. And thanks to Phil and John for obtaining the sets for the team…

An extremely simple, but useful upgrade of any kit utlizing these unique cluster munitions. Consisting of four bomb bodies with fins cast in place (THANK YOU EDUARD), and four sets of fusing windmill vanes. I have only seen one or two sets of these bombs in plastic from modeling companies, and usually these wind vanes are molded as circles. Yep, circles. Kinetic’s bombs have actual vanes, but they are subject to the limits of plastic injection; the resin on Eduard’s set is far better! These vanes look the part and are delicate but take the minor sanding of the backside to remove the pour stub well (if you do it carefully). Also included are accurate decals.

Veteran Models in Taiwan has been producing finely detailed multi-media aftermarket replacement parts for ship modelers for quite some time. Nicely crafted, their parts are a significant upgrade to model warships. They started in 1/350 Modern USN systems and have since branched into other Navies. Now they are offering modern Soviet/Russian systems.

If you have noticed Soviet and later Russian ships are busy, some would say crowded, with sensors and weapon systems. While functional, none of these are elegant in design, and the number of each provides redundancy to ensure survivability and reliability. Each one is hodge-podge of small detail not easily duplicated in the ejection molding process, no matter how sophisticated the molds. So Veteran Models move into this area is welcome by at least this modeler.