Courtesy of MiniArt Models website: The Flettner Fl 282 Kolibri (“Hummingbird”) is a single-seat open cockpit inter-meshing rotor helicopter produced by Anton Flettner of Germany. The Fl 282 was undoubtedly Anton Flettner’s most successful helicopter development. Prototype testing finished by July of 1940 when the helicopter entered service.

In 1942 German Navy began testing of FI 282. The FI 282 was found to have good handling in good and bad weather, with stable flight characteristics in all conditions, whilst also being quite maneuverable. Several tests involved rough conditions at sea including landing in harsh conditions which the Kolibri proved itself a capable and reliable machine.

In 1942 a total of twenty prototypes were in testing. Based on the prototypes’ success, plans to manufacture 1000 helicopters were approved; however, these were never built in such numbers due to the allied bombing of the Flettner and BMW factories.

Scale Aircraft Conversions (SAC) manufactures white metal landing gear that is a direct replacement for the kits plastic landing gear. The metal landing gear offer greater strength over the kit parts as well as having most of the mold lines removed. At times the metal will be bent out of shape but that is easily corrected by bending it back to the correct shape.

This set includes four parts, the main gear struts and two options for the tail wheel. The main gear are exact copies of the kit parts with most of the mold lined cleaned up. The tail wheel offers both tail wheel versions offered by Tamiya where one has a canvas covering over the oleo strut and the other showing the strut exposed. Tamiya’s instructions indicate which subject uses which tail wheel option.

I've made several of attempts to model a Corsair without much success. I either got bored with the build, frustrated with the fit and moved onto something else, or just didn't find a kit that suit my modeling style. I even resorted to conning a fellow club member into doing a buddy-build with dubious success. Mine not theirs.

All of those machinations have fallen short of adding a Vought Corsair model to my collection, until now. When I first saw that AFV Club was releasing a 1/144th scale Corsair I was every excited. This diminutive size is my preferred scale for modeling aircraft and until now there really hasn't been a descent kit available. While excited to get my hands on this kit there was a still bit of trepidation.

This is another high-quality resin aftermarket product from QuickBoost and their parent company Aires.

These gun barrels are a simple replacement for the 1/32 Revell He 219 barrels. They are attached to a resin stub, and each gun will need to be removed with a razor saw. All the barrels show fine detail and hollowed barrel ends.

Per the QuickBoost instructions when using Part # 2 (that replaces kit part # F41), the outer two barrels need to be removed. QuickBoost shows where to cut with the use of indentations in the stub. This is also shown in the Revell instructions. These guns will be used in the forward fuselage belly. The two guns that were removed can be used in the upper fuselage gun pack if required.

Part 1 is a wing root mounted gun and replaces Revell kit # G50.

Justo Miranda is well known for his books on Luftwaffe paper projects and designs, having published many soft cover and hard cover books on these subjects. His background as a tech drawer and advisor to the Spanish Air Force Museum have aided in the quality of his books.

This book covers the jet fighter designs of Kurt Tank and Focke-Wulf. It is divided into 29 chapters covering the jet designs that were proposed in WWII and beyond by the company and Mr. Tank.

Focke Wulf, producers of the superb Fw-190 and its derivatives were probably “saved” by their decision to go with a radial engine design thus not being in direct competition with the favored Messerschmitt Company for inline engines since by winning the 1936 fighter competition meant it had first priority for advanced inline engines.