As you would expect from Quickboost, the exhausts are very finely cast, and feature hollowed out ends for each exhaust stack which will greatly improve the look of the exhausts on your model.

To get an idea of how the parts would look in use, I painted them Testor’s Metalizer non-buffing steel and then dusted them with a reddish-orange pastel powder.  All that is left is to dust them with a little black or dark grey paint at the tips and to find a Arma Hobby Yak-1B kit to install them in.

Highly recommended.

Thank you to Aires/Quickboost for the review sample.

The P-51 Mustang was an excellent fighter, but it also proved to be a universal photo-reconnaissance plane. Its performance: speed, ceiling, armament, and great range meant that it could efficiently reach a distant target, photograph it and safely return to the base. To become a long-range aerial spy, the Mustang, unlike, for example, the Spitfire, required only the installation of photographic equipment.

As a former paratrooper and combat veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom, I was eager to read and review The Paras in Iraq, Operation Telic 1 by Craig Allen. The title of the book is self-explanatory and replete with fantastic photos of first and third battalions of the British Army’s Parachute Regiment in action; first in staging areas in Kuwait, then their move into Basrah and further operations in Baghdad. Knowing a rudimentary history of the British Paras and UK forces in Iraq, I was ready to jump (pun intended) into the book. I was not disappointed.

The new Airfix 1/72 Tempest V kit is very nice but, in some areas there’s a slight lack of detail and sharpness. These two new releases from Brengun/Hauler in the Czech Republic can fix one of those areas of weakness.

Cast in Brengun’s standard medium grey resin, there are two different items - what they term Early and Late Wheels. What this means is reality is that early Tempests had Typhoon main wheel hubs with 5 spokes. Sometime in the JN-series, this changed to a new 4-spoke design, but the exact cut off is not known. What is known is that the first 50 Tempest Vs (JN729 to JN773 and JN792-796) were built using the centre-sections from a cancelled Typhoon contract, so it would make sense that they, at least, had the 5-spoke wheels.

I was able to obtain a copy of the Airfix kit and so could make a direct comparison of the kit and resin wheels. As the photo shows, the resin parts are much more refined and have much sharper detail.

Subtitled ‘Air-to-Air Images,’ this book by Key Publishing is a photographic collection of such images of the RAF during the Seventies and Eighties, a period marked by tensions between NATO and the Warsaw Pact in which the RAF was a major player in the defense of Western Europe through its forces in the UK and West Germany.

Author Tony Paxton was a frontline RAF fighter pilot and was seemingly never without his camera, as all the 200 or so photos in this book are all by his hand. Most are of excellent quality, given the limitations of film types of the period, and many are produced full page and in full colour.

The book is divided into a number of chapters, starting with a brief introduction to the Cold War and continuing with various aspects of the RAF. Generally these concentrate on a specific role or aircraft type. As such, the reader will find coverage of such types as the Tornado, Phantom, Lightning, Harrier and VC10 amongst many others.