History

The Bf109G-5 and -6 fighters were produced in parallel and were pressurized and non-pressurized versions of the same fighter. The G-6 was most widely produced variant and remained in service till the end of the war. Erich Hartmann was probably the most famous pilot to fly the Bf 109 and is the highest scoring ace in the Luftwaffe.

The kit: Hasegawa has released versions of the G-6 or -14 at least 12 times and nothing has changed with this boxing other than the decals. The parts are crisply molded in grey with recessed detail and little to no flash. The clear parts typical Hasegawa quality and look nice. The resin figure is very nice but has a mold seam line down the middle of his face and back of his head…this will be a pain to clean up.

SE.5a Wolsely Viper

This is an excellent newly tooled kit from Edward, who continue to set the standard for the finest in model kits. This kit will appeal to less experienced modelers, who may not want to use the photoetch or install the plane’s rigging. More advanced modelers will be able to enjoy the detail provided by the photoetch and rigging. Either way, this builds into a beautiful model.

This is a nice resin & photoetch set that replaces the Vickers and Lewis machine guns in Eduard’s new SE.5a kit. The resin has better detail than the kit plastic parts and the Vickers gun is easier to install. Some of the resin and photoetch pieces are extremely small.

Background

The Royal Aircraft Factory SE.5a was armed with a single synchronized .303-inch Vickers machine gun mounted in the fuselage in front of the cockpit. Many versions also had an upper wing-mounted Lewis gun fitted on a Foster Mounting to allow the pilot to fire at overhead aircraft. Eduard’s newly released SE.5a kit includes both guns, which are replaced by the parts in this add-on package.

This is a re-issue by Round2 of a kit first released a few years ago by AMT.

This is a kit of the BatBoat from the movie Batman Returns, and featured in the movie climax.

In the box is:

• 1 chrome sprue
• 3 x wing parts
• 1 black sprue
• 1 upper hull section
• 1 lower hull section
• 1 cardboard fold out backdrop (based on scene from the movie)
• 1 instruction booklet

All of the 18 parts are well molded and great detail, the only issue is the large number of ejector pin marks on the rear and side wing parts. The instruction booklet is easy to follow and well-illustrated.

Construction

Stage 1, 2 and 3 is the construction of the Batboat interior and installing it into the lower hull. The interior parts were painted and some shading/weathering added to make it look sharp. This was the only painting needed on this kit.

Trumpeter continues to produce a wide range of interesting and wide ranging Russian subjects. While the box says that this is the Russian AT-S Tractor, in fact, this is a two-in-one kit. Also included with the prime mover is the Soviet ML-20 152 mm howitzer Mod 1937. As with most Trumpeter kits, the box is sturdy and the sprues are individually packaged and the more fragile parts are wrapped in foam. For the prime mover there are twelve sprues, including four for the individual track links, one sprue of transparent parts and a small PE fret. There are markings for three vehicles, Russian, Finnish, and the German Democratic Republic. For this build, I chose the Finnish markings. For the artillery piece, there are nine sprues, two PE frets, a set of rubber tires and a metal gun barrel. As with most recent Trumpeter models, the parts are well molded in grey plastic, though there is some fine flash and mold lines present on the parts which take some time to clean up.