Background

The MiG-21 FISHBED has been the backbone of numerous air forces throughout the world. Recently, in the modeling community, we have been blessed with many variants of the MiG-21 from multiple manufacturers. This review covers the new release of the 1/72nd Revell of Germany MiG-21F-13 FISHBED C. This kit was previous released by Revell of Germany in 2005. Since the first release, it’s become relatively non-existent. However, that has now all changed with this new release! The only difference between the 2005 and 2015 releases are the decals (there were far more options and stencils in 2005).

Over the past few years, Master has established itself as a quality provider of turned-metal aftermarket details for ships, armor, and aircraft. Their latest set of new releases cover the F6F Hellcat, providing welcome metal details for three variants in three major scales. The detail set under review today covers the F6F Hellcat Night Fighters’ armament configurations in 1/72 scale.

General Motors brought back the Camaro in 2010, and in 2012 came out with the ZL1 version. The ZL1 features a more powerful 6.2L 580hp LSA V-8 engine and for many, is the flagship Camaro on the market today.

The kit itself comes with a pre-finished body, and 48 parts. It’s listed as a “skill level 3” kit and comes in an attractive box that shows the color of the car. My review sample was red, but I have seen black versions as well.

Parts are packaged very well with the pre-finished body held in place with a plastic strip, and the chrome wheels packaged in their own container. The clear sprue and the red tail light sprue are packed in their own bags, as are the side mirrors and tires.

The kit’s clear parts come attached the body, so there is little chance they are going to get marked up. A nice touch is the black outlines along all of the clear parts.

Parts are molded in black, and a metallic grey and the external body parts are pre-painted.

Scale Aircraft Modelling's October 2015 issue comes with a gorgeous picture of a Wolfpacks 1/72 T-2 Buckeye in trainer markings. For me, that sets the tone for a great issue as I love the color scheme.

And that is how this issue starts with Karl Robinsons’ build of the beautiful 1/72 scale T-2 in the US Navy training scheme. He is well impressed with the kit and only notes small issues with fitting the intakes and flaps which are easily corrected.

Roden’s 1/144 kit of Bristol’s Type 175 Britannia is built by Andy McCabe. He builds it in BOAC markings and it looks wonderful for what he considers a “quick build”.

Mike Verier writes an excellent article on Gunships, highlighting the Roden 1/144 AC-47 Spooky. Not only does the article have an excellent build of the kit in which he scratch builds bulkheads and interior detail, but he follows it with an article detailing Roden 1/144 AC-119K and more info on other gunships.

Looking at all those photos of Polikarpov I-16s sitting on the grass and noting that the elevators are both drooping? Aires has come to the rescue with a beautiful set to replace the horizontal tail surfaces for the Polikarpov I-16. There are no supplied instructions; you simply swap out the kit provided plastic parts with the new Aires replacements. These Aires parts are specific replacements for the kit parts found in the Eduard series of I-16 kits.

Aires has molded the stabilizer and elevator perfectly in light grey resin with no apparent bubbles. The Aires stabilizer and elevator are supplied on a single resin sprue with thin resin attachments to the parts that should minimize any cleanup.