Thanks to Aires/Quickboost for providing more of their excellent aftermarket parts for IPMS USA to review, and to IPMS leadership for sending it my way.

The new Airfix Mark 1 1/48 Spitfire is, by all accounts, an excellent kit. Detail is on par with 1/32 kits… and will make a show-stopper if built to the max.

One area which can, however, be improved on,is the Rotol Propeller. The kit items are slightly heavy; a resin replacement is definitely in order!

The Quickboost item addresses two areas; the thickness of the propeller blades themselves, and the spinner itself. The kit item has a baseplate, to which a propeller assembly is attached (it is keyed, so you can’t really mess it up), after which you install the spinner itself.

Once more, a quick review for a quick upgrade; Quickboost has provided 12 miniscule Resin gun barrels with oval cooling vents for use with the Airfix Lancaster B II. This is the Hercules radial-engined Lancaster release, but the gun barrels will work on this kit and their recent other Lancaster B I and III Merlin engine released kits as well. As noted in my other review of the .303 barrels with round holes, these should work on just about any aircraft requiring .303 gun barrels. As a note, the oval perforation gun barrels are slightly shorter than the round perforation barrels.

The muzzles are hollow, and the simulation of the oval perforations is well done. In my case, painting them black then using the side of a #2 pencil and (GENTLY) polishing with a soft cloth, I was able to bring out the detail.

History

The Avia B-534 was one of the classic biplane fighters of the 1930’s, and served with several Eastern European air forces, some lasting almost to the end of World War II. When the nation of Czechoslovakia was formed by the Treaty of Versailles, the Czech part was much more industrialized than the Slovak section, and it wasn’t long until a company, Avia, was formed, and began producing different types of aircraft for military and civilian use. In the early thirties, a biplane fighter was developed, eventually evolving into the B.534 series. Prototypes were powered by various radial and in-line engines, and the first B.534 has a License built Hispano Suiza 12 Vprs 12 cylinder liquid cooled engine. Several production batches followed, differing mainly in fuselage configuration, armament, landing gear arrangement, and the location of various engine components.

The main production models were as follows:

This product consists of two resin wheel spat assemblies for the Avia B.534 kit. They are molded in one piece, and there is space next to the wheels to make the units look hollow so that a wheel could really be in there. Only slight trimming at the top sprue attachment point is require, a 10 second process. There is also a paper mask included so that you can paint the wheel and tire, and then mask it off and paint the surface of the unit. The instructions show a small silver panel on top of the spat, probably as a step for maintenance and refueling. The parts are packaged in a heavy plastic case mounted packed in foam, so there is no way they’d be damaged unless they were hit with something nuclear.

Revell’s PBY kits has been issued twice – once without landing gear (the PBY-5 version) and later with wheels (the PBY-5A version). Eduard has produced a superb set of wheels for the PBY-5A which includes both the main and nose gear. The set comes with seven resin parts, instructions and masks for the wheels. Casting is superb with no flaws.

Construction is simple. Remove the casting blocks from the main wheel with a razor saw and clean up the small seam. Cut the front wheel loose following the same process. There are four wheel hubs for the main wheels. I cut these loose with a razor saw also and sanded the backs until they fit flush in the wheels. Next, I used a sharp blade and cleaned the flash off on the wheel hub spokes and inside the wheels.