IPMS/USA Reviews

The book goes into great detail of the development, service, variants and full history of a classic car which is one of the world's most popular cars ever produced. I have always loved this little car, with great memories of traveling in one when I was a child in the Sixties. The book is a wonderful treasure trove of pictures that I have ever seen before and even though I thought I knew a lot about this car it has so much more history and facts I never heard before.

Also, it is written by a very professional and knowledgeable author of lots of articles I have read and enjoyed before. The car's history goes back to Wartime Germany in the late 1930s and goes on till today! The car was the brainchild of the great car designer Ferdinand Porsche and was to be the Peoples car of the Third Reich under Hitler, hence Volkswagen (Peoples Car).

I found this book fascinating and made me aware of a lot of information I have never read before. The pictures alone are well worth getting this book for.

I was amazed at the amount of information and history found in the pages of this extremely enjoyable book.

Background

German battleships and heavy cruisers were equipped with three armored fire-control posts (in the conning tower, on the foretop, and on top of the aft superstructure. Target selectors around the foretop selected air targets. Each of the selectors, called ZAGs, worked in conjunction with one of the Directors for targeting. Veteran Models Fire Control Set provides 4 - ZAG Light Flak Directors, 4 - Zielsaule C/38 S Night Directors, plus 8 - 1540mm Search Light Directors.

The resin pieces are exquisitely cast with extremely fine detail, and virtually no imperfections. There is some very minor flash on the parts, but no bubbles or voids. The eyepieces even have recessed ends! The small photoetch fret provides hand wheels for the Light Controllers and Night Directors, and there are several spares for the extremely small pieces.

The Flak director has 3 resin pieces, and the other equipment is one resin piece plus photoetch hand wheels. Other than being very small, the parts go together very well and add excellent detail.

Gareth Williams has been a curator at the British Museum since 1996, with responsibility for British and European coinage, about AD 500 to about 1180. Within this area, he specializes in Anglo-Saxon and Viking coinage. Much of his work focuses on the use of coinage as evidence within broader historical and archaeological studies. Gareth has authored at least fifteen books and led several projects at the British Museum, with a "Viking Voyages" exhibition that recently finished a run from March 2015 through February 2017. He has been actively involved in historical re-enactments. Check him out at the British Museum.

Hauler produces photo-etched and resin upgrade sets for armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), airplanes, cars, railway vehicles, and dioramas. They also produce a few resin kits. Their products are in most of the common scale sizes, 1/72, 1/48, and 1/35, but they also produce a number of other items in common railroad hobbyist scales.

This set of resin gold bars is an example of some of the unusual items they offer. The set includes a stack of 12 bars and another four individual bars. All of the parts are attached to their sprue stubs, and you'll need to take care when cutting them off. The stack of bars presented the most trouble for me to get off the stub while keeping the tops of the bars intact. I was able to sand down any imperfections and they came out pretty well. The stack and individual bars represent the "Good Delivery" bars that are very familiar to most of us from television shows and movies. Not sure too many people have actually seen or held one in real life.

The R-3S (AA-2 "Atoll") air-to-air missile was developed by the Soviet Union as their equivalent of the AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. It was used extensively by the Soviet Union on its fighters and it was exported widely to its allies.

In conjunction with Eduard's release last summer of its new MiG-21MF kit, Eduard released several photo-etch and resin accessory sets for the kit. This set is actually the combination of two other sets: MiG-21MF pylons (672 184) and R-3S missiles for MiG-21 (672 185). As a result, the set not only provides replacement pylons for all five stations, but also four R-3S ("Atoll") air-to-air missiles and their associated launch rails. Buying this set instead of the other two sets individually will also save you a few bucks as the suggested retail price of this set is $3 cheaper than the combined price of the other two sets.