At the start of World War II, Germany’s advancements in mobile warfare shocked the world with their speed, ferocity, and success on the battlefield as they swept across Europe. Although, not always successful at the start, Germany was the first army to combine tanks, artillery, air power, and mobile infantry into a dominating force on the battlefield. Over the course of the war, the Allied powers tried to figure out a way to replicate Germany’s successes, with varying results. As reserves and resources became more scarce, Germany’s capabilities became more and more degraded and they were never able to get the same results they experienced during the early part of the war.

Mini Art, a Ukrainian company, has an extensive line of buildings and diorama accessories.

Everything from village cottages, city houses, and workshops to middle-eastern ruins. They also market a rather complete line of accessories to go along with their structure kits. These include fencing, staircases, furniture and crockery.

Case in point is the new set of Café Furniture and Crockery. The set includes fifty pieces on five sprues. You get two bistro-style tables and four wooden chairs. You also get one sprue with some crockery. The crockery consists of three plates/saucers and three cups as well as three mugs/steins. On my example, these parts were molded in white. There is also a small sprue of two types of bottles molded in clear green and a small sprue of glasses/stemware, in three styles, molded in clear plastic.

Model Art Issue 63 is typical of other Model Art magazines in that it is written entirely in Japanese, with occasional English words, usually in article titles or in captions. The All About Aviation is part of the Model Art Extra series. This issue leads off with either short articles on a finished build or an in depth step-by-step ‘how to’ on the build and painting. The finished model photographs are of high quality in brightness, color, and depth of focus. Advertising is limited to two pages, the inside covers. I counted 749 color photos, one black and white drawing, and 106 color drawings, many color profiles. You will find throughout this journal, color photographs of the real aircraft that are discussed.

The spindly stance of the Bf-109 is always a pain on the real 109 and on models of it. They are fragile and susceptible to damage. This is especially an issue when there is no additional support around like the landing gear covers.

Eduard has an answer for that, brass landing gear. This little set is a gem and like a gem it is shiny. There are two brass landing gear legs in the blister package and two resin landing gear covers. The brass parts required very little clean up. The only part that actually needed to be cleaned up was on the mounting surface. The rest of it was beautifully cast without a mold line. The two resin landing gear doors are nice as well. The doors have detail on the inside of them as well, including the brake line. One thing about the brake line on the real thing is that it is in a circle. On this set, the loop is missing. It doesn’t detract from the set as most of it is hidden.

The pinnacle of the Eduard product line is the Royal Class series. The particular boxing features two complete Bf-109F kits, one with square wheels wells and one with round ones. Two clear plastic sprues round out the plastic parts. Brassin wheels, tail wheels and exhausts are the resin pieces included. Two pre-painted photo etch frets are included along with six brass frets. The one fret contains the parts necessary to do the F-1 variant of Werner’s Mölders, the first time this variant has been modeled. Then there are three frets for the exhaust shrouds. A single mask set includes the masks necessary for both models. Of course there are marking options, 14 of them to be exact.