IPMS/USA Reviews

IPMS/USA recognizes one of our own, Floyd Werner, for providing this sheet set for review and I personally applaud our reviewer corps leadership, John Noack and Phil Peterson, for sending them to me for review. Floyd is well known for his expertise in the WWII Luftwaffe genre, as well as his personal exploits flying Snakes in the U.S. Army. This sheet was sponsored by Kitty Hawk, the much-maligned (but in my opinion) EXCELLENT company which provides us with products which would NEVER have seen the light unless they took the plunge. So you have to work to make them to personal standard? Huff... part of the price of admission. ( I swear if you give these guys a new, free Lexus they'd complain about the new car smell)

To Glen Coleman and Joe Lortie, I don't know you but owe you guys a beer for making these kits and this sheet a reality. Ignore the flamers and naysayers, they aren't paying the bills to make your goal of constantly improving and being one of the best Model companies out there a reality... every new kit is better than the last. THANKS!

If you want to make life a little easier when masking and painting canopies and wheels, you may want to check out the line of masks produced by Eduard. This particular set is made for the Hobby Boss A-4E (kit 81764), and provides masks for the windscreen, canopy, and wheels/tires. The precut masks are easy to use, so modelers with a little experience placing items in exact locations will have no issues with this set.

After seeing the decals provided at the IPMS Nationals last year, I decided that I needed to add an A-4E Skyhawk to my stash, and being a relatively small plane, 1/48 scale seemed appropriate. Hobby Boss had recently released their kit of the E model, so it was an easy decision when I saw one on the Squadron table. My late father in law was a Naval Aviator, and he flew some A-4 missions in Vietnam, including Iron Hand, so this will a bit of a tribute to him once built.

Kari Stenman has authored, or co-authored, aviation books for the past 49 years. He ran his own publishing company in Finland, focusing on Finnish Aviation History. Many of them were in his Suomen Ilmavoimien Historia series that were originally in Finnish only, but later re-released with Finnish and English text. including:

IPMS/USA thanks the Eduard team up front for sending us this absolutely stunning set for the new Eduard FW-190 series. I received this set when difficulty was experienced by another reviewer having some issues out of his control in getting the sets reviewed, so I volunteered and got "The lot". Hooo boy...

Another note: right after I got the sets, I had work and a funeral interfere with MY life, so these took some time to get done; particularly since I was working out of a hotel (as I am now again on OTHER review items) so I'm a bit behind.

First off, Eduard has produced some of the best sets, bar none, for the FW-190. In this review I used both the engine sets and the upper gun deck sets; here are my observations.

First, the sets fit great. I had a few difficulties with figuring out what went where, but was able to overcome and get them installed. The upper MG's in particular need care in installation, or you can really have them out of whack.

Brengun continues its line of aircraft accessories with this set of two 250kg Japanese bombs from World War II. The set consists of two resin bomb bodies and a small photo-etch fret with the fins and fuse propellers. As you would expect with Brengun the resin castings are outstanding and easily removed from the casting plugs at the aft end of the bomb. My set had a little flash one the sides of the bombs from the casting process, but it was very thin and easily removed and the bomb bodies were quickly cleaned up.

The bomb fins are easily removed from the fret with photo etch scissors. Take care to cut them as close to the fin as you can to minimize having to try and clean up the attachment points after removing the fins from the fret as they are fairly small and very thin. I was a little disappointed with the fuse propellers as they are attached to the fret by one of the four blades, but there is no demarcation as to where to cut this blade, and since the propellers are very tiny, I found I guessed wrong more than I guessed right. Fortunately there were a couple of extra propellers on the fret!