Quickboost has released several items to enhance the Italeri Hurricane. Among them are these “drop-in” replacement parts for the gun barrels. They are very nicely rendered in medium grey resin, with crisp panel lines and good depth for the barrels.

During construction, however, I ran into problems. The replacement parts are a bit too wide to fit in their slots in the wings. Maybe the problem is due to my construction of the wings, but neither the starboard nor the port gun barrel would fit.

I’ve measured the slots and the resin parts and maybe the problem is that both the replacement parts and the slots have the exact same width (20.0 mm, measured with a caliper). Perhaps the resin parts should have been a tad narrower to be able to fit in the slots?

The kit subject addresses a generally under-represented set of modern USN aircraft carrier details. While there is an abundance of aftermarket aircraft available for 1:350 carriers, with the exception of some resin offerings there is very little available for the ubiquitous utility vehicles that populate carrier decks. This under-representation has been lessened by MRC with the release of a carrier deck equipment kit.

Packaging and Contents

Everything is in a double-blister pack with the interior blister pack designed as a tray to hold the sprues. For me, this interior pack or tray served well as a corral for very small parts. Two identical sprues are provided in the kit. All parts are crisply molded in light gray plastic. The sprue frames are formed nicely to provide protection for the delicate one-piece fork lift cages. The assembly instructions and painting guides are part of the cardboard packaging. No decal sheet is included.

If you are familiar with Air Modeller, then you have a set of expectations regarding the content. You know that the images are stunning, the layout of the content is excellent, and that the coverage of the “build” projects (usually six aircraft models in various scales featuring kits from different manufacturers) is consistent from issue to issue.

In this issue you will be treated to some excellent images of projects featuring:

In this new offering from Osprey Publishing, author Jon Guttman writes about the pilots who flew with the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS), as well as those who flew against them. As a former carrier sailor, my interest in naval aviation quickly drew my interest for this review. The pilots who flew during the “Great War” also hold a special fascination for me, as this new technology was being introduced with few realizing how it would eventually change the world, and how wars would be fought in the future.

History

The Supermarine Spitfire series has often been described as the most aesthetically pleasing aircraft ever flown. During the course of its service life, the basic Spitfire design was progressively altered with heavier armament, camera installations and no armament, more powerful engines, canopy revisions, fixed and retracting tail wheel, larger vertical stabilizers and rudders, clipped wings and extended wingtips, propeller revisions, as well as several radiator revisions. In addition, the Spitfire was also modified for naval operations and was known as the “Seafire” with the fuselage reinforced and a tail hook added.

During its service life, about 22,750 Spitfires and Seafires were manufactured. Weight increased from 5,800 to over 11,000 lbs, with engine horsepower increasing from 1020 to 2050 HP, and speeds increasing from 364 to 452 MPH.