Modelers’ Guide to the P-38 Lightning is the third in a series of books published by Aero Research to aid modelers who want to build accurate models of specific aircraft. According to the first sentence in the book’s introduction: “This book is a guide to building any military variant of the P-38 Lightning, using existing kits.” That is not an understatement. The book will be a very useful reference for anyone planning to build any P-38. All variants, from prototype to the M model (and all photo-recon versions) are included. Author Jay Sherlock has done a thorough job of researching and organizing pertinent information that modelers usually find they need sometime during a project. As a matter of fact, the book will come in handy before starting the project – when deciding which kit to purchase. The first chapter describes in detail all kits currently available in 1/44, 1/72, 1/48 and 1/32 scales, and each description includes a small color photo of the box top.

One of ICM’s most recent offering is a set of PAG-14 Airfield plates used in the construction of airfields by the Soviet Union at home and in the Warsaw Pact nations. This particular set is for 1/48th scale. Knowing little of Soviet airfield construction – and what I did know centered on the use of hexagonal blocks for construction – I conducted online research into the PAG-14 plates. My first queries turned up a few photos, but then I found a research paper online — Naum Sapozhnikov and Raymond Rollings, Soviet Precast Pre-stressed Construction for Airfields, April 2007 — that shed a lot of light onto the use of these plates for airfield construction. Here is a little of the background from that paper.

This is another kit designed for Zvezda's war-game "Art of Tactic". This time it is a Vickers K machine-gun with a crew of 4, used by the BEF in France in 1940.

There are 25 parts including the gun, 4 crewmen, a base, and a flag piece for the game, as well as a movement card. Most of the parts make up the crew, with only 4 parts for the gun, and one of these includes the arm of the gunner. It is the usual snap-together kit made out of their usual softer plastic. The parts can be trimmed with a sharp knife but cleaning up the mold line on the figures is difficult. Tamiya liquid glue was used to help keep things together.

Great Wall is a company new to me. I have seen their wonderful P-61 in a much larger scale and was impressed. This kit of the Avro Vulcan B.2 is equally impressive, especially considering the small scale.

Upon opening the box, I was Impressed with the packaging. Everything was either wrapped in plastic or foam paper. The fuselage is broken in half horizontally. I really liked the one-piece intakes that fit perfectly. In fact, every piece on this kit fits beautifully. No filler was needed at all.

Due to locating pins in the wings, they snapped together perfectly. This was the best fitting kit I have ever built.

I didn’t forget to add a nose weight before closing the fuselage. The kit includes an instrument panel and two pilots which I didn’t put in, as they cannot be seen thru the tiny windscreen.

1/24th scale, molded in “WRX” mica blue, black, clear and chrome; includes window masking templates, photo etched parts on an adhesive backing, and metal hood brace. The kit makes one version.

History and Research

The Subaru BRZ (B=boxer enginer, R=rear wheel drive, Z=last letter in the alphabet) is a result of a joint collaboration between Toyota and Subaru. It was designed as a world car and is known by the names Subaru BRZ, Toyota GT86, and the Scion FR-S. They are all powered by a flat “boxer”-style 4-cylinder engines in all models and is engineered by Subaru. Most of the rest of the development of the car was the work of Toyota.