History and Performance

In the summer of 1943 a proposal was offered by Steyr Werke to the Ordnance Department for the mounting of a PaK 40/4 on a RSO chassis as a small self-propelled anti-tank weapon. 60 machines we converted for testing. Combat trials on the East Front began in early January 1944.

The Kit

The kit is packaged in Dragon current sturdy box, with a color image on the front and a montage of features on the box bottom and sides. The box top shows that over 460 Parts are included. There are eleven sprues, molded in the familiar grey plastic with crisp detail. The hull and chassis front are molded separately.

Instructions - The instructions are typical Dragon, with eight fold-out pages. There are a total of 21 construction Steps, with numerous subassemblies noted. Very busy for such a small kit, but it gets one’s attention. There are no unused Parts indicated.

Captain Eric Brown is the doyen of test pilots; a former Chief Naval Test Pilot and Commanding officer of the Aerodynamics Flight of the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Farnborough, Brown is in the Guinness Book of Records as the pilot-in-command who has flown the most types of aircraft – over 490 and they are all listed in the front of this book. His career in test piloting started back in 1942 after a spell on combat operations over the North Atlantic, and lasted through to the 1960s. He is therefore the ideal person to write about many different types of aircraft from a pilot’s perspective and compare them to each other.

A Brief History

For seven years, 1 month and 4 days, Hayabusa (translated as Peregrine Falcon) traveled to and from the asteroid, 25143 Itokawa. Returning to Earth, the Hayabusa, or more precisely, that portion of the spacecraft designed for re-entry and landing on Earth, landed near Woomera, Australia. Hayabusa returned particles of the asteroid for study, resulting in a significant advance in our knowledge of asteroids and, at the same time, setting a high standard for future flights of this nature.

Growing up near the beach, I saw plenty of double and triple-hull sailboats. I always thought that they were so cool and fast. So then I saw photos of the triple hull USS Independence, I knew I had to have a model of this ship. It looks so cool and fast, rumors are speed capability of 50+ knots.

The kit is modeled in typical Trumpeter gray and clear and consists of seven sprues (two clear), an upper hull, lower hull and three photo-etched frets. Also included with the kit are typical twelve page Trumpeter instruction booklet, a decal sheet, and a five-view color painting and marking guide.

Looking at each of the sprues, I found that the detail was crisp with no flash. However, I did find some ejector pin markings that need to be addressed, specifically in the hanger bulkheads. If you plan to keep the hanger door closed, as I plan to, you won’t have to deal with these.

Model Art magazine is a very well known model magazine from Japan. It seems to do well selling here, even though it is written completely in Japanese. They really do believe in the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words”. There are so many wonderful pictures in this magazine that you can really tell what is going on.

The magazine is 7 1/8 inches X 10 1/8 inches and is printed on glossy stock. Most of the pictures are in color and also a lot of black-and-white, toward the back. This magazine looks more like a trade paperback than a magazine, and it has a superb binding. No pages falling out here! This book is built to last for many projects to come.