I like the Mirage family of jets, they just look fast. An interesting feature is the bulbous nose probe out in front of the radome. In plastic this is a hard part to clean up – I have suffered these trials with the Heller Mirage 2000 and the Italeri Mirage F.1. The Mirage 2000 was the Eduard re-release that I built for IPMS review. Well, the nose probe was a casualty of the road on my way to its first contest entry! I made the repair, but it looked a bit short and then it was subsequently lost. The Model Master probe is far more petite and prototypical, so I was eager to try this brass replacement and restore my Mirage to its visual glory!

In this set Quickboost offers a drop-in replacement set of exhaust pipes for the Trumpeter C-47. This set eliminates pesky mold seams and provides a deeper more realistic exhaust opening. The exhaust pipes in the kit and the QB replacements appear to have built-in mufflers. My guess is that Trumpeter depicted a later style exhaust. The Monogram kit, on the other hand, has a short pipe with a more turned out opening. This earlier style is more appropriate for the WWII aircraft. Working on the hunch that the QB pipes are a later style, I went through my reference and I have found pictures of Vietnam era Gooney Birds with such a pipe, including the AC-47 gunships. This also includes the C-47s the Army used for VIP transport in CONUS. So if you are modeling the later aircraft, including the Monogram AC-47 release, these mufflers would be more appropriate for your model. Highly recommended.

First released in 1974, the Tamiya M8 Howitzer Motor Carriage still holds up reasonably well to more modern offerings by this company, as well as some of the new folks on the block. This is one of several 1/35 scale kits that Tamiya has decided to re-release this year, and I for one certainly enjoy having another opportunity to build some of the kits that I missed out on back when they were originally released, as I had not yet picked up the armor modeling bug. A few years ago, I recall seeing a photograph of an M8 built by another modeler, and I started a search that took me a little over a year to fulfill in finding one of the original kits. That one is still on a shelf (along with a Verlinden update set), but this was a great opportunity to build what is a very well designed kit, even by today’s standards.

• ALC 311Klear Kote Light Sheen 4oz/120ml
• ALC 312 Klear Kote Semi-Matte 4oz/120m
• ALC 313 Klear Kote Matte 4oz/120ml
• ALC 314 Klear Kote Flat 4oz/120ml
• ALC 408 Armoured Glass Tint 1oz/30ml
• ALC 600 Aqua Gloss Clear 4oz/120ml

As has been the case for as long as I have known him, Tony Hipp seems to be on an endless quest to develop and bring to market still more excellent products for the discriminating modeler. For years, we’ve searched for the ultimate natural metal finishes, and when Alclad first came on the market, every other product took a distant place far behind. Tony’s products, my estimation, have become the benchmark to which all standards are measured.

These new offerings are not aluminum paints, but will go a long way to make whatever your modeling project is more realistic.

Master Box continues to release some really nice and different figure sets. These rests are very different than other sets on the market and usually very “in action” type poses. They also make a series of dual sets. These are designed to be easily made into a combat action series of figures. On their website, this is listed as #2 which means the German figures should be #1. The only issue is that there currently is no #1 set. There is however, an Italian Infantry in Africa set #1 and this must be the set to be used in conjunction with the #2 set.