The Parts

Upon opening the box, the modeler will find two frets of detail parts, six vacuformed parts which assemble into the ruined building, and one part, the base, representing the street, sidewalk, and a small pile of rubble that fell from the building in the process of becoming…ruined.

The detail parts are injection molded. Included in the detail parts are parts for:

• A short length of wrought-iron fence (not shown on the box art)
• A street lamp (visible on the box art)
• A main door and framing parts for the door frame (visible on the box art)
• Set of window frames, window shutters, and framing materials for the windows

MiniArt usually includes detail parts that are generic in nature and can be added to other structures, or added to the simulated pile of debris on the base.

When I first heard this was coming out, I just couldn’t wait. It is such a unique and interesting piece of US military history, and personally one of my favorite tanks ever built. When it was announced that IPMS had received one for review, I was certain it would be requested instantly. Now, whether it was overlooked, or whether everyone simply wasn’t as eager as me to build this beast of a kit (or didn’t have the space to display it), it hadn’t been claimed. So I jumped at the chance to review it. Oh, what a build I was in for…

Having built the Academy Special Edition 1/72 Helldiver a couple years ago, I jumped at the opportunity to review the new Cyber-Hobby Helldiver. The kit represents a slightly earlier Helldiver, with one of the most noticeable differences being the solid dive flaps. When the kit arrived, I was very impressed. The molding was well done, with crisp detail and no molding flaws. The kit is the high quality we have come to know from Dragon/Cyber-Hobby.

Along with several other photo etch sets made for detailing the Kinetic EA-6B and A-6E kits, Eduard offers this wing fold enhancement. Though the kit detail of the wing fold is adequate, this set definitely fine tunes the whole mechanism and lends a lot of detail. All together, there are 66 pieces of photo etch detail, all of which must be folded at least once, most twice. Removal of four tabs and four hinges on each kit wing gets the process started. These are replaced with three dimensionally-etched hinges and rib detail which, when painted and dirtied up, will give a great depiction of the real thing. Each wing also gets a very delicate manifold and plumbing piece. All of these are etched in the light gauge steel that Eduard sometimes uses, so they are a little more stiff that the normal photo etch, which is great for this application.

My thanks to Eduard for the review sample.

One of my favorite aircraft to model is the MiG-21. The airplane was the most important fighter of the old Soviet Union for many years and was exported virtually around the world. The number of interesting color schemes abounds.

We have all seen a great number of reviews of impressive parts from Master Model and have purchased a few, so I jumped at the chance to review their new MiG-21 Pitot Tubes. The subject of this review is a solid, milled replacement for the plastic pitot tubes from Fishbed D and F models. These MiG-21 PF and PFM models were a part of the second generation Fishbeds and were widely exported.

The attached photo shows a comparison of the Master Models part against an old Airfix MiG-21 model. A day and night difference. The instruction sheet does a great job of showing how to modify the kit to accept the Master Model part, how to align the new part, and how to paint it.