Kit Contents

Those modelers who have previously built Hasegawa’s F/A-18F Super Hornet will be very familiar with one of it’s weakest areas - the cockpit. Hasegawa’s cockpit is very simplified with basic ejection seats and decals for the blank instrument panels and side panels. The busy “turtledeck” behind the rear ejection seat is represented by only a flat plane, and the canopy’s internal structure is limited to the rear portion of the frame, omitting the center brace.

Eduard starting producing resin recently and started producing some superb wheels for different kits. This set is for Me-262's and can be used on Tamiya, DML or Monogram kits.

In the package, you get 9 beautiful resin pieces- there add shows different resin for the wheel and hubs but they are all perfectly cast dark gray resin. All you need to do is remove the pour stubs and you are ready to go. The hubs are cast separately and I love this. Typical German wheels were black hubs and dark gray rubber wheels. This makes painting that scheme simple. Also, the tread pattern is beautiful as shown in the close-up shots.

First, a little background. The He-219 Uhu was a purpose designed night fighter and also the first operational aircraft to have ejection seats. The plane had an advanced VHF radar, a 385 mph top speed, excellent armament and good range. It was not available in quantity however which is probably a blessing for the bombers flying at night.

Revell's kit consists of 12 light gray sprues of medium soft styrene with 2 clear sprues. There is a large booklet of instructions and a large decal sheet. There is some small amount of flash on the sprues. The decal sheet gives you options for four planes:

If you want to dress up HobbyBoss' excellent 1/32 P-61, Superscale decals give you three options for P-61B's based on Iwo Jima from the 548th NFS. Inside the package, you get a page of full color instructions and a nicely done decal sheet printed by Cartograf.

The instruction sheet contains paint and marking schemes for three planes all of which are black with red spinners and cowlings which match the red plane numbers. The planes are:

• "Lady in the Dark", P-61B-1-NO, S/N 42-39408
• "Midnight Madness", P-61B-1-NO, S/N 42-39404
• "Cooper's Snooper", P-61B-2-NO, S/N 42-39454

There are placement guides for the excellent nose art and unit markings and also the national insignia. The nose art in two cases are very well done pin-up girls.

The decals are beautiful and perfectly in register and also include propeller markings, plane data and pilot data. Cartograf makes excellent decals and I am sure these will apply very well.

In the Novembers issue of Model Art they start as usual with the special feature. This months special feature is on weathering techniques and painting of aircraft. The article starts of with Tamiya's beautiful 1/32 F4U-1 Corsair. With this model they incorporate post shading, exhaust staining and fuel stains. The next model is the Hasegawa 1/48th A6M2b Type 21 "Junyo Fighter group". This aircraft was originally finished in IJN gray but then was over sprayed with one of the greens that Japan used during the war leaving a blotchy finish. They show you how to achieve this in this section. Next up is the Tamiya 1/48 Spitfire Mk.1. This section covers chipping, masking and some general weathering. Zvezda Yak-3 1/48th is used next. This section deals with general weathering and details of the kit. The next section covers dust. They use the Eduard 1/48th Bf-109E-7 Trop for this demonstration. The last next article uses the Hasegawa 1/48 Henchel 129B-2 "Winter Camouflage".