The Aires Hobby Models website lists not only the Aires product line of resin replacement accessories, but also Quickboost, Wheelliant and Aerobonus. I have used products from all four lines and have never been disappointed. Collectively the product lines offer a broad choice of detail enhanced replacement parts for aircraft models in several scales.

The subject resin parts come in a sealed clear package with a small "instruction" enclosed therein. The instructions are limited to a profile of the parts with the portions of the resin to be removed shaded grey. The parts are surrounded on two sides by resin "legs" to protect the parts. I noted that the arrestor shaft had a small opening cast in the end where the hook was to be attached.

There’s a lot of parts, fourteen to be exact, to this landing gear replacement, and they are done very well. Parts represented are D20,21,30 and 31; G28,35 and 45, and J12, 13, 16, 17, 32, 38 and 39. Of course they are all in white metal, which requires some polishing and some smoothing of the surface on a couple of the parts, and assembly using gap filling CA glue. The parts come in the typical SAC clear plastic bubble card. The AH-64 is a heavy aircraft, so he white metal assembly will definitely give it some stability.

The Grumman F6F Hellcat was designed to replace the F4F Wildcat with a better competitor to the Japanese fighters. In typical Grumman fashion, they developed a rugged plane designed to keep the pilot alive, with good armament, while being easy to fly. The Hellcat made its combat debut in August 1943 and became the Navy’s standard combat aircraft. By the end of the war, it had racked up over 5200 victories, accounting for 75% of the Navy’s air-to-air victories.

Master Model of Poland produces small brass parts for detailing models, be they aircraft or ships. They have parts for aircraft in 1/32, 1/35, 1/48, 1/72, and 1/144, mostly pitot tubes, refueling probes and gun barrels.

The pitot part is a very fine piece of brass. The brass pitot is much finer than the kit part. Note that in the photos at the bottom, the pitot on the kit has already bent. While I was putting on decals it completely broke off. This saved me having to cut off the pitot to put on the Master brass part. It also shows why the Master part is superior.

Pitot Installation

The installation is pretty simple. I drilled a hole in the nose where the kit pitot had broken off. I test fitted the new part to make sure it fit OK. I put a small drop of gel-type super glue on the base of the pitot, and put it in that hole. I used a bit of accelerator to save some time.

Master Model has come to the rescue of big scale Typhoon modelers with their latest releases in 1/24 scale. Both the Hawker Typhoon Mk IB Early Type Cannons with Uncovered Barrels with Flat Recoil Springs (24-014) and Round Recoil Springs (24-015) have been released. Despite the large scale, Airfix’s 20mm Hispano Mk.II cannon barrels can still be significantly improved over the injection plastic offered in the kit. This set is specifically applicable to the Airfix 1/24 Hawker Typhoon. There are currently two releases available. The Hawker Typhoon Mk.IB was released in 2014 with a second release in 2016 featuring additional parts for the ‘Car Door’ option. The first production batch of Typhoon Mk.Ib used the uncovered barrels featured in this set.