The Navy FJ-4 was, to many people, the culmination of the basic North American Sabre Jet. This final naval variant featured a more powerful engine which required a larger intake, a shorter, deeper fuselage, a larger tail, larger wing area and a longer nose gear. Its front line service was short, however. Although the FJ-4B was loved by its pilots, by the late ‘50’s the Fury was being phased out by newer, less expensive fighter and attack aircraft. They referred to it as the “Cadillac”, while its counterpart and eventual replacement, the A4D, was referred to as the “Tinkertoy”.

Emhar issued the FJ-4B in 1/72nd scale in 1990 and is a great kit. There are really only two shortfalls of the kit; the first being a rather basic cockpit and the second being a crude, short exhaust/jet pipe. Pavla has recently released resin detail parts for the cockpit and the exhaust.

Eduard has come out with two double kits of the MiG-15. This one is the Czechoslovakian MiGs. There are two differences between the kits. First is markings. This one is for Eduard’s “home team”, with 7 different Czech MiGs. The second difference is that one of the MiGs in this kit has three guns in the nose instead of two. This is the build with three guns.

Since this is a double kit, you get two of everything. I used the other kit to do the Eduard PE upgrade. I was also gratified to see that there are two slightly different sets of main wheels per kit. There’s also the usual canopy mask and wheel masks, which are top quality.

The one-off racing car “Eldridge", derived from the old Fiat SB4 chassis, became known as Mephistofele for the infernal noise emitted by its powerful aircraft 6-cylinder in-line engine, giving a capacity over 20,000 cm3, not attenuated by exhaust mufflers kept “free” to provide the most significant performance. On 12th July 1924 in Arpajon, the Mefistofele was able to reach, driven by its pilot and designer Ernest Eldrige, the amazing speed, for the time, of 146.01 miles per hour (over 230 Km/h) and broke the World Land Speed Record achieving an impressive result. The Mefistofele, was characterized by the high back bodywork able to contain the powerful Fiat A-12 liquid-cooled engine and for its structure especially made to achieve the speed record.

Eduard recently released two very good 1/144 MiG-15 kits. This is the PE detail set designed to make the kit even better.

What you get is a fairly small PE fret with color cockpit components and aluminum colored parts. This is pretty good, since most of the exterior parts are will be natural aluminum when finished. There are only enough parts to upgrade one aircraft per PE set.

The Cockpit

This utilizes the Eduard cockpit tub. I painted the interior medium gray (36320) and the seat black. Then the PE instrument panel goes in, and the PE seat belts. The seat belts are absolutely super. There are also two side consoles and two handles which go in the cockpit. I used Gator Glue to put these parts in.

Following the instructions, I put the cockpit into the fuselage along with the intake splitter, and glued the fuselage halves (top & bottom) together. Back to the PE.

The new website for Airscale (Model Aircraft Enhancements), out of the UK, describe the company as providing ‘High resolution cockpit detailing for aircraft modellers’. This is my first exposure to this company’s impressive products, which range from 1/48th through 1/24th scales and include highly detailed cockpit decals placards, and etched brass. The decals are offered as individual images as well as full panels, and products are offered for WWI, WWII and post-war, for RAF, USAF, USN and Luftwaffe, and for prop aircraft and jets. Their website is well designed, easy to navigate, and they take PayPal. ‘Comprehensive’ is the word that comes to mind, and I will be returning to their site often.