Osprey Publishing continues to expand its weapon series, this time by adding a book on the exemplary Finnish-made Suomi KP/-31 submachine gun.

The book has a very reasonable breakdown of the following chapters: Introduction, development, use, impact, conclusion and bibliography, plus an index.

I’ve found particularly interesting the development, use and impact chapters. They were clearly really well researched and it included descriptions of the weapon characteristics, as well as the description of its use in combat by the Finnish ski troops against the Soviet troops. It should be noted that this submachine gun could also be used as a sniper gun, giving its high accuracy up to distances of several hundred meters.

Perhaps one of the best compliments to the overall design and performance is that this particular submachine gun was somewhat copied by the soviets and issued to their own troops in the later years of the war.

This is the second detailing set from Quickboost for the new Trumpeter Su-24 Fencer kits and focuses on the external antennas. The set includes replacements for 3 of the antennas in the kit and provides 5 others that are not in the kit. As the set is market simply for the Trumpeter Su-24, you may need to alter the antenna locations a little bit depending on whether you are building the Su-24MR or the Su-24M.

The antennas are sharply cast in Quickboost’s standard resin and the castings not only include the individual antennas, but also the mounting plate by which the antenna is attached to the aircraft. The antennas are easily separated from the cast block, either with a razor saw or even with sprue nippers. I removed the antennas one at a time, sanded down the mounting plate and then attached the antenna with superglue before moving on to the next antenna.

The Ship

Originally laid down as the luxury liner Kashiwara Maru in 1939, Junyo (along with her sister Hiyo) was part of an IJN subsidized building program of commercial and auxiliary vessels that could be quickly converted into aircraft carriers if the need arose. She was taken in hand by the Navy and commissioned in 1942 in time to participate in the Aleutians invasion in June, part of the overall Midway operation.

Thank you to Bert Kinzey and Rock Roszak for continuing to bring back a tremendous resource for the modeler, exclusively in a digital format. Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to test out this new and exciting method of researching history, details, versions and markings of the Convair F-102 Delta Dagger. The official title is F-102 Delta Dagger in Detail & Scale, Digital Volume 6.

Lt. Col. William A. Flanagan, aka Bill “Flaps” Flanagan, was an SR-71 RSO for five years, flying out of Palmdale. Bill was inspired to join the US Air Force due to a Northrop YB-49 trading card. Later on in his career, he became the 14th pilot to fly the Northrop B-2. He flew combat McDonnell F-4 Phantom IIs in Vietnam followed by an assignment in Europe under NATO. Next up for Bill was his experience as a test pilot for Lockheed where he was part of a task force for upgrades to the SR-71 Blackbird. Now he is a docent at Blackbird Airpark, in Palmdale, California, currently home to not only a SR-71A, a D-21B, a unique Lockheed U-2D, but a Lockheed A-12 Blackbird. Bill has been done a multitude of videos, including: