Scale Aircraft Modelling's September 2015 issue comes packed with great build articles of some unique planes as well as continuing its fine history and modelling articles with everything from new kits, scratchbuilds and older kits.

Ken Duffey builds Trumpeters 1/72 J-15 which also includes a flight deck. Several of Mr. Duffeys pictures are also included showing the wing folding mechanisms. The finished models looks great with the plane poised for launch.

Revell of Germany’s 1/144 Airbus A330-330 gets built two ways- one in Delta Airline markings and a shot of the same plane in Thai Airways markings. While released almost a decade ago, the kit still produces beautiful looking airliners.

Tony O’Toole’s article on the Short Sterling A Mk. IV and its participation in Operation Market Garden offer a review of a historic plane and one of its efforts. The article is both well written and extremely well illustrated.

ICM has produced a little gem – an extremely authentic, well-engineered, gem of a model.

First of all to introduce myself a bit. I have been palling around with my wife and her parents around for the past twenty-eight years, and her family has owned a Ford Model T since my wife was a young child. Between our two families, we own three Model Ts, one of which a 1914 Touring, not unlike this 1913 Roadster. My father-in-law, Jim, restored a T in the early 1970s, and Jim and I restored my wife’s 1926 T in the 1990s. I bring all of this up to illustrate that we’ve spent enough time under these old rigs to know where not to step after one has been parked for a while.

Background

The Model T was the first mass-produced automobile. In 1913 over 170,000 Model Ts were produced; an average of one Model T rolled off the assembly line every 185 seconds. For production to maintain levels that high, everything had to be done at breakneck speed, including painting.

HobbyBoss has released a hypothetical production variant of the Me-262: the A-1/U1 version. Is this a Luft’ 46 model? Some might say yes, but the truth is that both the enhanced nose weaponry (MG 151 and Mk 103) and the X-4 missiles were all manufactured before the end of WWII. I would say this is a Luftwaffe ’45 “2nd-Half”.

The kit comes in 12 grey sprues, 2 clear sprues for the canopy and a metal nose wheel well to prevent having a ‘tail sitter’. The sprues are cleanly molded, free of flash and with well-defined recessed panel lines.

The model has a full interior consisting of a nose gun bay, fully detailed cockpit and main landing gear bay plus a nicely detailed back fuselage (with a radio set and a compass set). However the detail in the back fuselage is pretty much impossible to see once the model is finished. There is only one service panel and it is not large enough as to allow viewing of all that detail.

The GBU-10 Paveway II laser guided bomb is a modified version of the Mk. 84 general purpose bomb with added fins and guidance system. Eduard has produced a set of two GBU-10’s in 1/48th scale. Each set has two bomb bodies, separate front fins for 8 parts and two sets of seeker heads for the front; one ready for use and one with a cast in cover. Casting is perfect and in standard Eduard dark gray resin. Also included are the instructions and a decal sheet with all the markings.

As with most of SAC’s landing gear sets, this set provides drop in replacement parts for the three main gear struts for Hasegawa’s new Su-35S kit. The set consists of a nose gear strut and two main landing gear struts. The three castings are very sharp and crisp. I used a brass wire wheel in my battery operated Dremel tool and slow speed to polish up the struts and remove the casting seams. I then primed the struts with Tamiya grey primer and painted them with a Tamiya light grey, with the oleo sections picked out with chrome silver. I had hoped to show them off installed on the Hasegawa kit, but the kit I ordered is apparently either on the slowest boat or is taking the long way around the world to get to me, as it is still in transit from somewhere.

The set paints up really well and will add a nice touch of detail (and weight) to your Su-35.

Recommended. Thank you to Scale Aircraft Conversions and IPMS/USA for the review sample.