Scale Aircraft Conversions has released a nice set of replacement landing gear for the Kitty Hawk 1/48 Vought XF5U-1. The eleven parts supplied include the tail gear, main gear, torque links, and main gear retraction arms. A side by side evaluation of all the SAC parts shows the similarity with the kit parts. There are no supplied instructions; you simply swap out the kit provided plastic parts with the new white metal items. You do need to be very careful to assure proper alignment on all three axes. The SAC landing gear may need to be slightly adjusted to be straight (a benefit of using metal is that you can bend it slightly). Smooth jaw needle nose pliers work wonderfully.

Scale Aircraft Conversions has released replacement landing gear for the excellent Pilot Replicas 1/48 SAAB J 21 A-3. The 13 parts supplied include the nose gear, main gear, torque links, and main gear retraction arms. A side by side evaluation of all the SAC parts shows the similarity with the kit parts. Ross McMillan has combined two parts by securing the nose gear wheel fork to the nose gear, eliminating a potential point of failure. There are no supplied instructions; you simply swap out the kit provided plastic parts with the new white metal items. You do need to be very careful to assure proper alignment on all three axes. The SAC landing gear may need to be slightly adjusted to be straight (a benefit of using metal is that you can bend it slightly). Smooth jaw needle nose pliers work wonderfully.

The parts are packaged in a thin plastic sleeve, and the resin is protected by additional reinforcement ribs. Four control levers (sticks) are provided, but the kit requires only two.

Compared to the Hobby Boss (HB) kit parts, the Quickboost (QB) has great improvement on detail over the HB part. The most noticeable difference is the grip shape itself giving crisp detail and accurate contours. Another area of improvement is the grip pivot (roll) accurately replicating that unique pivot. The HB part is very basic where the QB part has finer detail as well as small wiring provided in the casting.

Aires/Quickboost is known for exquisite detail on all of their update sets and this review sample is no exception. I would like to thank Aires for this review sample.

For several years now, Academy Plastic Model Company has been producing a series of kid-friendly kits based on the designs of Leonardo Da Vinci. I love these little kits. I have the armored car in my office as a conversation piece. These are, perhaps, more toys than traditional model kits but are a perfect kind of kit to introduce kids to modeling. This particular kit is modeled after Leonardo’s air screw. According to da-vinci-inventions.com, Da Vinci sketched out his air screw in the 15^th century. The screw was manufactured from linen, wire, and reeds and was to be rotated by a crew of four men. It was never constructed and would have been an impractical flying machine to say the least. Nevertheless, it is testament to Da Vinci’s genius.

When they revamped Battlestar Galactica in 2003 they revamped many of the ships including the Viper fighters. They were retiring the Mk II as the new Mk VII was in service. Unfortunately, the Cylons had a way to disrupt the newer fighters rendering them powerless so the Mk II fighters had to be brought back into service to carry the fight. Later in the series the Mk VIIs were able to rejoin their earlier cousins and combat the Cylon tyranny.

Moebius brought out very nicely detailed 1/32^nd scale kits of both Viper versions as well as the new Cylon Raider but these kits didn’t really fit in with my collection of 72^nd scale fighters so I was very excited to see them release new kits of all 3 of these fighters in my scale and to make things better, you get 2 kits in each box. This review focus’ on the newest kit, the Viper Mark VIIs.