The advance THANK YOU to Furball aero design for sending IPMS USA these decals, and the fearless leaders at the reviewer corps for allowing me once again to do a review!

Every once in a while a product comes along that makes you wonder “why didn’t someone do this before?” In this case, framing on F-105’s is the subject.

I have struggled myself to paint the framing on canopies. Anything below 1/48 scale, “forget it”, and even then when it was attempted by yours truly, well, it was really awful. Because it’s so noticeable around the focal point of a model, the cockpit, office, whatever, it generally became an exercise in frustration.

These new decals by Furball, however, take care of the problem. You get two sets of decals: one designed for the F-105D single-seat and one set for the F-105F/G two seat models.

Model Art is a Japanese publication that specializes in different aspects of plastic modelling. They have a monthly publication that covers all different genres, but also they publish special issues focusing on a specific topic. In this case the issue is part of a series known as “German AFV Database”.

This issue in particular covers many (if not all) the different AFV that were based on the Panzer IV and the Panzer 38(t) chassis -that have ever been kitted in 1/35 scale.

Be aware that all the text in this special issue is in Japanese. Still the pictures are pretty self-explanatory, including pictures of the model box art plus the sprues of the kit. If you install Google Translate in your smartphone, you can get a machine-based translation for the images captions by simply taking a picture of them.

Scale Aircraft Conversions has produced replacement gear for the Italeri/Testors 1/72 scale C-130 family of kits. The white metal replacements are an identical fit replacement for the kit plastic parts. The supplied items include two main gear struts and the nose gear assembly. Some other SAC packages include replacement wheels, as well, but this is not the case here. You will need to use the Italeri/Testors kit wheels for your build.

A side by side evaluation (see photos) indicates an identical replacement that should provide a greater strength assembly with a significantly improved weight capacity and abuse tolerance. However, use some care, because in this scale, even cast metal parts are very fine and fragile. I found it easy to accidentally bend them out of shape with my heavy-handedness.

In some cases where original equipment was left in a natural metal finish, painting may not be necessary. As always, check your reference photos.

Master Model produces beautiful little brass parts for aircraft. Their particular thing is those easily broken and lost parts, pitot tubes and wing guns. I also recently did a review on their gun barrels for the 1/144 Ju-87G Stuka, another set of easily broken parts.

The instructions are pretty basic, so you need to have some modeling experience to figure out what to do. On the other hand, once you’ve done one of these, it becomes pretty clear what the instructions want you to do.

Assembly

I started with Minicraft Spitfire Vc which has been on my shelf for a while. I began by cutting off the kit supplied guns with a sprue cutter. Master makes their guns a little longer so there’s a solid mating surface between the kit wing and the cannon barrel.

Thank you to Furball Aero-Design for extending this decal series. I am certain that F-14 fans will be thrilled with this set! Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for letting me review them, I am very appreciative of the chance to contribute back to the scale-modeling community.