Future Brief

Early in the 23rd century, the United Planets Cruiser C57-D travels to the planet Altair IV, 16 light-years from Earth, in search of the Bellerophon, a spaceship sent on an expedition 20 years earlier. Upon arrival on Altair, the crew is warned not to land or they could find themselves in harm’s way. The ship’s Commander disregards the warnings and lands anyway. Once safely on the planet, the crew observes Robby the Robot making a grand entrance driving his high speed land rover. He then invites them to visit Dr. Morbius, a survivor from the Bellerophon. This is where the ship's CO, XO, and the ship’s Doctor meet Altaira "Alta" Morbius, the daughter of Dr. Morbius.

Eduard has masterfully downsized their 1/48 Bf-110 family to my favorite scale of 1/72. I have waited a long time for an accurate 110 in 1/72, and from what I see in the box Eduard has delivered. You get a total of 171 parts in familiar light olive plastic, clear plastic, and etch. You also get canopy masks to make life easier when painting the frames. There are five decal options. The moldings are flash-free and the panel lines are recessed and finely cast. Some parts won’t be used in this boxing and some are rendered in both plastic and etch, so you will have bits left over for the spare box or perhaps to help dress-up other Bf-110s you have in your stash. The instructions are clear and easy to follow.

Warbird Decals is known just for that, its airplane and warbird decals. This release is a new venture and is for 1/24 scale cars. It features California license plates from between 1963 and 2012, and comes with the background on the color and style changes. This set contains 112 license plates covering the different styles. Eight of these are pre-lettered, but the remaining 104 are blank. Below this are the letters you use to customize the plates to your liking.

To customize a plate, pick the appropriate letters and color and cut them out. Warbird has provided a line indicating where the lettering should be located. Drop the letters on the plate (and there are great instructions on how to accomplish this) and let dry. The decal can then be applied with your own customized license plate!

The printing and alignment are superb. This set is highly recommended to all automotive modelers looking for some California Dreaming!

Object 279 was a Soviet prototype tank designed in 1959 to be capable of operating on a nuclear-biological-chemical battlefield and even survive the blast wave from a nuclear weapon (from a distance, anyway). The tank had a bowl-shaped body to channel blast energy around itself. The vehicle carried a 130mm main gun capable of firing discarding sabot shells that could penetrate over 400mm of armor. The tank’s own armor was up to 319mm thick. The tank had four tracks to assist it in going over exceedingly rough terrain. In spite of its advantages, the tank was never put into production due to gearbox reliability issues and its inability to cross some bridges and move in swampy areas, due to its weight.

Kit

The kit comes with four parts trees, three parts trees for the individual track links, the upper and lower hull sections, a PE fret, a small length of copper wire for the tow cables, and the instruction booklet. Also, there is a print of the box art photo.

Caracal Models started to release decals in 2011 and has released some of the neatest and best markings to come out in the last couple years. Kinetic’s S2 Tracker is a neat kit and everyone I have seen build is exactly the same color – gull gray over white. While that's an attractive scheme, Caracal Models dug deep and gave modelers another option.

The Trackers on these sheets have decals for two S2F-1’s with the large radar above the cockpit but in overall gloss sea blue. There are two separate markings:

• BuNo 133320, VS-21 from the USS Princeton in 1956
• BuNo 133258, VS-20 from the USS Princeton in 1956

Both planes are overall blue with black anti-glare panel and deicer boots. The radome is also tan. The decals come in a single sheet and are colorful, well printed, and awesome.