What's New

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
Company
AMS Resin
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$8.99

The diminutive A-37 Dragonfly by Monogram/Encore is a nice kit, but the engine intakes and exhausts leave a little bit to be desired. One way to fix this is to hide the see-through with these covers from AMS Resin.

Molded in light grey resin, these four pieces are beautifully formed. They simply have to be painted red and added to the intake and exhausts. You may want to add Remove Before Flight tags which aren’t included but readily available. Because they are tapered, these are easily added after the model is done so if you already have a built kit, don’t fret, you can add these at any time.

These simple plugs are easy to add, inexpensive, and they do what they are designed to do, cover the intakes and exhausts.

Highly recommended

Thanks to AMS Resin for the review set and IPMS/USA for the review opportunity.

Review Author
Don Norton
Published on
Company
Master Box Ltd
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$24.99

With this kit, Master Box has come up with a creative and animated set of figures. The box contains two sprues with 62 parts in sand yellow plastic. Included are nine figures of US and British soldiers and a small dog. The box art by A. Karaschuk depicts American and British paras in a boxing match in the days leading up to June 6th (the C-47’s in the background all have their invasion stripes). The art is spot-on, and it would have been nice had Master Box given us exactly what was depicted on the box art, but they didn’t, so some detail work to accurize the model is necessary. This is not to imply the figures are not well done. The expressive facial and uniform detail is excellent.

All the figures require clean-up of mold seams with a file or a sanding stick. I usually use tube glue for assembly since it fills gaps. I’ll discuss each figure separately in the order they appear on the box art.

Review Author
Mark Aldrich
Published on
Company
Plusmodel
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$4.60

Sometimes in the model building universe that most of us live in, the planets align just right and a little glimmer of satisfaction shines through. This is the case with these fire extinguishers. I am currently building a conversion of an M3 IDF Sandwich Car. When the review list made its second round and no one had laid claim to the Plusmodel items, I volunteered to do the ones that no one wanted. When they arrived, I thought where and how I could use them instead of just painting and showing them off. Looking over my reference material, I noticed that many of the different Sandwich vehicles and the M3 in particular had fire extinguishers mounted on the right front panel in front of the engine access panel! How neat is that? WooHoo!!!! Confetti everywhere, and too bad not all modeling experiences work out that well.

Review Author
Mark Aldrich
Published on
Company
Plusmodel
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$4.60

Plusmodel has been making resin aftermarket items for as long as I can remember. Many moons ago, I purchased their GI Rats, thinking it was meals and finding out they were actually 1/35 resin rats. The items I have purchased and received since then have been nothing short of excellent. Their line has continued to grow and expand and they offer a wide range of items for the aircraft, armor, and figure modeler in several of the popular scales.

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
Company
Eduard
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$9.95

It comes as no surprise that I love the Eduard Fw-190A series of kits. Having had the pleasure of building quite a few of them, I have often remarked at the quality of the decals. These decals are printed by Eduard and typical of Eduard’s quality; these decals are actually as good as any other aftermarket decal in the world. They rival the quality of Cartograf.

The stencil decal themselves are all contained on a 4” x 3 ¾” decal sheet. The decals are crisp, perfectly printed, and in perfect register. They are suitably thin with minimal carrier film. One of the nice things is that the decals have wing walk areas in grey and black. There are options throughout the sheet, like the two different versions of black and two white versions of Nicht anfassen on the sheet. The landing gear servicing stencil is also provided in two styles.

Review Author
Floyd S. Werner Jr.
Published on
Company
Eduard
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$9.95

Eduard’s Bf-109E is a very nice kit. One of the nicest things about the kit is this additional decal sheet. Printed by Eduard, the actual sheet is a 3” x 4” sheet of decal film. There are decals for one complete airplane with all the stencils being included. You get three Nicht anfassen decals for the ailerons in white and black. I thought that there should be at least one more for the elevators but Eduard indicates that they are carried on the elevators so that may be an error on my part.

The instructions are on a double-sided half A4 page sheet and are very clear in showing you where the decals belong. Remember that sometimes the stencils were oversprayed and not every aircraft carries every stencil. I really liked that Eduard provides you with red and black wing walk areas.

Review Author
Roger Rasor
Published on
Company
Trumpeter
Scale
1/48
MSRP
$38.99

It seems amazing to me that Trumpeter is the fourth model company to market a 1/48 scale plastic kit of the Supermarine Attacker F.1 (the others being Classic Airframes, Falcon, and Magna Models). Amazing because this aircraft’s single most significant reason for mention in the history of aviation is the fact that it was the Fleet Air Arm‘s first jet fighter. It was not particularly successful in that role…it was just the first.

Book Author(s)
David Doyle
Review Author
Howie Belkin
Published on
Company
Squadron Signal Publications
MSRP
$18.95

At first glance, the Diamond T 4-ton Truck looks like the “Deuce and a Half” (2½ CCKW GMC series) on steroids. The U.S. Quartermaster Corps and Corps of Engineers needed a truck that could do everything the “Deuce and a Half” could do – and much, much more. The Diamond T 4-ton truck filled the bill, serving throughout WWII in all theatres. But the Diamond T had one major problem: it cost as much as twice that of the CCKW! So it was bought in smaller quantities and served the U.S. Military just over 10 years. It was the basis upon which the post-war M-34/M-35 2½ trucks and M-41/M54 5-ton series were based.

Review Author
Chris Smith
Published on
Company
Aoshima
Scale
1/12
MSRP
$72.00

History

Introduced in November of 1987, the NSR 250R was the second generation of the NSR line. In what many would call the best year for the NSR line, that model year introduced many innovations that made it a race winning performer. The most significant advance was the PGM module that controlled the carburetor performance, based on input from the throttle and speedometer to adjust the carbs in real time. This was the first computer control of its kind on a Honda motorcycle. This was in conjunction with the Honda RC, or” revolution control” system, an adjustable exhaust valve that constricted outflow at low RPM and opened at high RPM to produce optimum power at any throttle setting. Added to coated pistons to reduce friction wear were larger tires to keep the bike on the road and a powerful 249cc engine producing 49 hp. I’ve never ridden a motorcycle over 125cc and I thought that was impressive!

Review Author
Jeffrey Brown
Published on
Company
MiniArt
Scale
1/35
MSRP
$15.00

This review is of the MiniArt Street Section with Wall, a part of their diorama series of bases for armor models. Like the other section I built in an earlier review, this was also pretty easy to build. When weathered, this looks nice when finished.

First, you get a sheet of very soft plastic to use as the base with a cobblestone street and some sidewalks. This has some very well done details with the cobblestones and sidewalks. The base is marked off for where you will put the wall, as in the other diorama.

Now, this one is fairly easy and simple to build. It comes with a tower you have to build, but like the other dioramas they offer, this is an optional piece. I, for one, plan to use the manhole cover and drain from the other review I did to complete the street scene. I will also add some rubble and dirt.