From the Tamiya USA website: This modern Tamiya classic, originally released in 2005, has been updated with plastic road wheel parts in place of the original's die-cast components.

The Leclerc features a 4-stroke V8 diesel allowing a top speed of 72km/h on road and 50km/h cross country, and is equipped with a French-built 120mm, L/52 smoothbore cannon. Series 2 tanks have an air conditioner to cool the computer system as well as several other improvements.

The kit comes packed in Tamiya’s standard, strong box, with each sprue individually packed in its own plastic bag. A nice touch is a folded black and white sheet that provides French tank history and technological data on the various systems that make up this advanced tank. It is repeated in four languages on each page.

IPMS/USA thanks the Aires team once again for sending us this simple, excellent item for use on a kit, in this case, a Quickboost engine exhaust replacement for the new-mold Revell 1/32 Spitfire Mk V through IX. And thanks to Phil and John for obtaining the sets for the team…

This set consists of two exhaust banks. This set is the fishtail openings version, and is perfectly designed to install in the Revell new mold 1/32 Spitfire Mk V through IX series.

Why buy? The kit items come in halves, split down the middle, and therefore have an almost impossible to fill seam which destroys the detail. Ugh.

Enter Quickboost.

Who doesn’t like the bad guys? I’ve always had an affinity for them. I wanted to know who they were and how they operated. Well these decals from Furball Aero-Design highlight the ‘psuedo’ bad guys, the OPFOR or Aggressors as the Navy calls them. The F-5N and F-5F adversaries are some colorful aircraft used to replicate potential bad guys.

There are eight aircraft included on this sheet. They have markings that are sure to motivate you to build one of these. These are quite colorful and offer a variety of paint schemes.

The decals are packaged in a large ziplock bag with full color instructions for every aircraft. Inside you are treated to high quality paper printed on both sides in beautiful color. Each aircraft has it own page. There are five 8.5 x 11inch sheets. The cover shows the colorful selection. Then the aircraft are shown. There are seven F-5Ns and one F-5F. The back page contains the stencil instructions.

The Panavia Tornado started out as the MRCA (Multi Role Combat Aircraft). The idea was to apply the latest (1970s) technology to an aircraft which could do a number of jobs, replacing “older” aircraft like the Fiat G-91, the Blackburn Buccaneer, and the Lockheed F-104. The Tornado is a cooperative project, with Britain, Germany and Italy participating in design and production tasks. The only “foreign” user of the Tornado is the Royal Saudi Air Force.

This book covers the Tornado through development and most of its service life. The RAF plans to retire their Tornadoes in 2019, Italy retired theirs in 2004. The Luftwaffe may retire theirs in 2025. Or not. The Saudis plan to keep theirs until 2020 or so. All 4 of the users have had combat missions flown by their Tornadoes. A recce mission flown by the Luftwaffe over Bosnia in 1995 was the first combat mission flown by the Luftwaffe since 1945.

The Tamiya Bf-109G-6 is an awesome kit. There are some areas that could use upgrading. One of those areas is the wheels.

Eduard supplies three light grey resin pieces and a mask set inside their typical blister pack. The detail is far superior to the kit offering. The one thing that you will notice is that the wheels have bulged sidewalls and flat bottoms. This is especially nice on the tail wheel which should have a distinct bulge. The bulge is not overdone and looks very convincing.

The instructions are included on a small sheet that points out exactly what needs to be done. The only thing that really needs to be done, other than remove and paint, is to drill a hole for the tail wheel strut in the appropriate tail wheel mount.

The wheels are keyed for the Tamiya kit so they will fit perfectly.

Masks are also provided to use on both the main and tail wheels. The instructions show you how to use them.