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The latest journal of Cross & Cockade International - Spring 2016, features a water-color painting of two Short Admiralty Type 166 Seaplanes on the cover. The rear cover shows a photograph of Captain Eric John Stephens and his 41 Squadron SE5a along with a photo of Captain Frank Ormond Soden and his captured Fokker D VII of Ltn Adolph Auer (Jasta 40). If you check out the web site link above, you can get additional sample pics of the current issue.

Cross & Cockade International is a non-profit UK based group known as the First World War Aviation Historical Society that publishes their journal four times a year. They also provide a free newsletter (sign up on their website) and occasionally publish WWI themed books like the Sopwith Dolphin monograph I reviewed earlier for IPMS USA. This Journal is the sister of the US Journal, Over The Front.

Whether you are interested in German paper projects of World War 2, a fan of Luftwaffe ’46 planes, or just a builder of unique aircraft, allow me to direct your attention to this recent release from Bronco Models. The relatively low parts count (57 in all) allows for a quick build for modelers with only limited experience. The only challenge may be a few small items, but these are not too daunting with a good pair of tweezers. The beauty of a kit like this is that you cannot go wrong with any paint scheme or markings that you choose, as no one will ever have a photo of the real thing to prove you wrong.

The Italeri kit this release is based on was first issued in 1988, and I not only bought it then but built it up into one of my all-time favorite dioramas. As with a lot of Italeri kits released at the time, there were a few spots of oversimplification, but it was a quick and fun build and certainly looked the part when complete.

Tamiya has done something interesting here, in that they have re-released this almost thirty year old kit along with their equally venerable U.S. Command figure set. Since I have built these figures numerous times over the intervening years, I will forgo the pleasure of repeating myself here.

I am have here today a set of resin exhaust stacks from Quickboost and anyone who has used their products know you are getting the absolute best bang for your buck in awesome engineering and accurate fit to go with a very affordable price which is extremely important in today’s economy and greatly affects the decision making for a lot of modelers when it comes to selecting aftermarket details.

The exhaust stack have 3 small sets mounted to 1 pour stub with the exhaust ports already bored out, and are designed to replace about 4 parts total from the Eduard 1/72nd scale Fw 190 and these can be used for either the A-5 or A-8 which are currently the only released kits in this scale from Eduard.

Kit Parts replaced are as followed

The AMK L-29 is a superb kit with great detail and options for display. One option is to pose open the nitrogen bay in the nose with a forward opening cover as was seen during pre-flight servicing. While the kit nose base is detailed, Aires offers additional detail cast into these resin replacement pieces for the bay and the cover. I have included pictures of the resin parts and a comparison with the kit pieces (darker gray). Neither the kit nor the Aires set provides the prop for the cover.