Upfront, I want to thank Scale Aircraft Conversions for providing outstanding aftermarket bits for our beloved model kits, and to the IPMS USA a big thank you for allowing me to review the Scale Aircraft Conversions metal gear.
Soviet Cold War Guided Missile Cruisers by Edward Hampshire is his third book and first for Osprey Publishing. Edward Hampshire earned his PhD in War Studies from King’s College in London with a thesis on British naval equipment of the 1960s. His focus is Cold War era navies and British defense policy since WWII. Dr. Hampshire has taught at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and has worked at the National Archives. He has been featured on television and radio, including the BBC, ITV, ABC, and NBC. Dr. Hampshire’s previous book was published in 2013, East of Suez to the Eastern Atlantic, British Naval Policy 1964-70. He also co-authored British Intelligence: Secrets, Spies and Sources, published in 2008. He has been a Senior Lecturer at the Royal Royal Military Academy Sandhurst since 2012.
The Hasegawa Eggplane Series is just plain fun. They assemble quickly, are generally well engineered, and for me provide an immediate platform to practice my budding modeling skills. I “assembled” plastic models as a kid; messy tube-glue seams and hand brushed finishes. I reenter the hobby a few years ago by joining the local IPMS chapter and enrolling in the club’s Adult Building Course. Since, then I have built a few successful projects with the skills learned in the ABC and practice on my Eggplanes.
The F-2 & T-4 “ADTW 60th ANNIVERSARY” box set are my 4th and 5th Eggplanes. The box set is a reissue of previous releases of the F-2 and F-4 with special ADTW 60th Anniversary decals. The 2 kits are packaged separately with individual instruction sheets and a combined decal sheet. I proceed as two individual builds.
The MSRP for the tape products are: 5mm $6.50 and 12mm $11.50
Masking is a job that makes most modelers cringe but it is a task that at some point in your modeling career you will use. There are several different types of tapes out there that seem to do the task to a certain level but we can find complaints in all of them. I was given the opportunity to review 2 different sizes of Tamiya’s tape offering’s to allow you to mask curves on your model of choice. The tape is made out of a soft resin material, allowing the tape to adhere in a curved line while preventing paint from seeping into masked off areas.
Quickboost provides you with a product to replace your one-piece Po-2 horizontal tail surfaces with the capability of displaying the elevators in alternate position. Please note this set does not depict elevator tabs that are present on some aircraft. The packaging is the standard polyethylene bag secured to a header card with staples. There are no supplied instructions but then again, the three parts are a direct replacement for the kit’s horizontal tails surfaces.
Although this product is designed specifically for the ICM 1/48 kits (48251, 48252, and 48253) it should take zero- to minimal-modification effort to mount this set in the Admiral kits (4807, 4808, 4809), the Gavia kits (002/0399, 004/0600), the AZ Model kit (AZ4870), the Jadar-Model resin kit (48 001), or even the older Sierra Scale Models 48-46 vacuform kit.
Nicholas Straussler, a Hungarian designer living in Britain between the world wars, designed several armoured cars for Britain. He was eventually able to come to an agreement with the Weiss Manfred factory of Csepel, Budapest to produce armored vehicles for use in his home country. The most popular design, the Csaba, named for Attila the Hun’s son, was based on the Alvis AC2 armored car.
After successful trials, the Hungarian Army ordered approximately 100 vehicles in 1940. About 20 of these were used in combat, with the remaining vehicles seeing service as command or reconnaissance vehicles.
The Csaba had a 20 mm cannon and an 8 mm machine gun fixed on a centrally mounted turret, a crew of three, and was powered by a 90hp 8 cylinder Ford engine.
Hasegawa continues their fantastic line of small scale airliner aircraft, with this release of the military Boeing KC-767J tanker and E-767 AWACS versions. I have built a number of their other civil airliners, and they are designed to build easily and fairly quickly, by all levels of modeler. I have included pictures of the instruction sheets that cover the history and details of these ex-airliner, Japanese Air Self-Defense Force aircraft.
The two kits come in Hasegawa’s standard sized box, and packaging. Inside are two clear plastic bags, each of which contain the individual model sprues, clear parts, large ballast screws, a stand and poly caps. Loose in the box are two sets of instructions and one good quality decal sheet. Each kit also includes the extra parts specific to the tanker and AWACS.
One of the latest releases from Eduard in their rapidly expanding Brassin line are a set of late wheels intended for use on the new Tamiya F-14A (kit 61114). Consisting of eight resin parts along with a set of masks to aid in airbrushing the wheels and tires, the set can be used to dress up the appearance of the Tamiya kit, especially for modelers that like the representation of weight on their tires.
This set consists of resin main tires with separate inserts for the outer and inner wheels as well as front wheels, which are cast as single assemblies. The Tamiya kit provides main wheels that are molded as front and back halves, while the front wheels are molded as single pieces. Assembly and installation instructions are provided on the inside of a bi-folded sheet of paper that include the calling out of only two Gunze paint colors, Tire Black and White
Well, Batman fans, I’ve been a very lucky fellow indeed. The Penguin represents my fourth foray into this particular Moebius Models figure range, and what a kit it is!
Once again, the engineers at Moebius have bent over backward to make this large-scale figure as easy to paint as possible, with each area separated by assembly. The kit comes molded in white, which is the color of the Penguin’s vest, gloves and spats, and seems an appropriate choice for easy coverage. It also includes a clear plastic monocle and a rod for the umbrella, although in my instance these two latter items were missing from my sample. Moebius has kindly sent replacements, but in all honesty these were easy to scratch and I didn’t want to wait for the mailman to finish this charmer.
Aires continues its releases with this excellent set to make the horizontal stabilizers moveable on Trumpeters 1/48th scale F9F Panther. The set is comprises four perfectly molded parts with two for each side.
Casting is perfect and prep work takes about five minutes. Carefully cut the four parts free with a razor saw and then sand the edges smooth that were cut loose. They are already keyed to fit directly into the kit parts. A little clean up and they fit perfectly. One thing to note too, the set duplicates the kits surface detail very well with all the needed rivets. To finish, glue to the kit and angle the moveable parts to the same angle and paint.
This is a wonderful quick to add set from Aires and will give you kit more visual interest. Highly recommended
My thanks to Aires and IPMS/USA for the chance to review this great set.
