Ultracast has issued a figure than can be used in Tamiya's 1/32 F4U-1a Corsair and they picked one of my favorite subject, Pappy Boyington. The kit comes in seven well cast tan resin pieces- two arms, two legs, torso, head and chin strap. The castings are excellent with minimal to no mold lines. And the sculpt is by Mike Good and is superb.

I started the build by freeing the pasts from the casting blocks with a razor saw. A few scrapes with the back of a knife and the seams were gone. I added the arms and the legs and had small gaps. I used Squadron white putty to fill in the seams and smoothed with a lacquer thinner. Once dry, I primer with Alclad gray primer.

I started with the flesh which is only the face. I have started using Scale 75 paints and really like them. I built up layers over a base coat and probably over did the creases some. The eyes are meant to be slits like he is looking into the sun and I could got them a little narrow.

Tamiya’s Wildcat has been around for a while and it is an excellent kit. Scale Aircraft Conversion has produced a set of metal landing gear to use on the kit. The set includes all the gear parts including the portions up inside the nose. A new tail wheel is also included. The metal parts are well made and are drop in replacements for the kits parts, but are made of metal. The metal is stiff but retains its malleability. Some cleanup will be needed to free it from the molding sprues and I recommend a razor saw for this work.

Several modelers have asked me “why metal gear”? I agree, that this kit is not particularly heavy and my answer is twofold. First, have you ever lost a part? I have and while you can get the parts for most kits, getting these sturdier parts is much easier and it may be cheaper that the alternative of buying an entire sprue to get a part or two.

At the crescendo of the Second Barons' War were the battles of Lewes and Evesham. It was an era of high drama and intrigue, as tensions between crown and aristocracy had boiled over and a civil war erupted that would shape the future of English government. In this detailed study, Richard Brooks unravels the remarkable events at the battles of Lewes and Evesham, revealing the unusually tactical nature of the fighting, in sharp contrast to most medieval conflicts which were habitually settled by burning and ravaging. At Lewes, Simon de Montfort, the powerful renegade leader of the Baronial faction, won a vital victory, smashing the Royalist forces and capturing Henry III and Prince Edward. Edward escaped, however, to lead the Royalist armies to a crushing victory just a year later at Evesham.

Thank you to Bert Kinzey and Rock Roszak for bringing back a tremendous resource for the modeler, this time in digital format. Thank you to the IPMS Reviewer Corps for allowing me to test out this new and exciting method of researching colors and markings of my favorite jet of all time, the F-14 Tomcat. A very significant plus of this updated version is that the entire history of the Atlantic F-14 squadrons through Tomcat Sunset is now available in a single publication.

Aviaeology out of Canada produces decals specific to many Canadian themed subjects. The research going into these decals is second to none. This set includes markings for four different aircraft in a variety of schemes and is meant for Revell’s beautiful 1/48 scale Ventura kit (but they are available in other scales too. Here’s a list of the planes represented: