Military aircraft vol.83: Focke-Achgelis Fa330

Subject:	Focke-Achgelis Fa330
Scale:	1/72
Manufacturer:	Pavla
Price	US$25,00 plus shipping
Description	Injected plastic model with  waterslide decals and photo etched parts.
Comments	The Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 Bachstelze (English: Wagtail) was a type of rotary-wing kite, known as a gyroglider or rotor kite. They were towed behind German U-boats during World War II to allow a lookout to see farther.The Fa 330 could be deployed to the deck of the submarine by two people and was tethered to the U-boat by a 150 m (500 ft) cable. The airflow on the rotors as the boat motored along on the surface would spin them up. The kite would then be deployed behind the U-boat with its observer-pilot aboard, raising him approximately 120 meters above the surface and allowing him to see much farther — about 25 nautical miles (46 km), compared to the 5 nautical miles (9 km) visible from the conning tower of the U-boat. If the U-boat captain were forced to abandon it on the surface, the tether would be released and the Fa 330 descend slowly to the water. The Pavla kit is very easy to build. You should have some experience with photo etched metal parts as most of the model is made of this material. The finished kit is very small, so i decided to place it on some kind of vignette. Some pictures show the Fa330 on e a launch platform, and that seemed to be a nice solution to display my gyroglider. I hope you like it!

Military aircraft vol.82: Lockheed P38J Lightning Yippee

Subject:	Lockheed P38J Lightning Yippee
Scale:	1/72
Manufacturer:	Hobbyboss
Price	US$20,00 plus shipping
Description	Injected plastic model with  waterslide decals.
Comments	The 5,000th Lightning built, a P-38J-20-LO, 44-23296, was painted bright vermilion red, and had the name YIPPEE painted on the underside of the wings in big white letters as well as the signatures of hundreds of factory workers. This and other aircraft were used by a handful of Lockheed test pilots including Milo Burcham, Jimmie Mattern and Tony LeVier in remarkable flight demonstrations, performing such stunts as slow rolls at treetop level with one prop feathered to dispel the myth that the P-38 was unmanageable.  To build my version of Yippee i used Hobbyboss P38L and backdated  it to P38J. I could have used one of several P38J kits available, but i wanted to try this easy kit. Fit is very nice and detail is ok, but Academy's P38J is much better in all aspects. The decals from Iliad performed very well. I was afraid of the effect of the red color under the white markings. However, the density of the white is excellent. I hope you like the result as much as i did!

Space vehicles walkaround vol.5: Mercury spacecraft

Subject: Mercury space vehicles.

Location: Museum of science and industry, Chicago, Il, USA, 2014

Comments: This is Scott Carpenter's Aurora 7 Mercury spacecraft.

Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from the U.S. Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted twenty unmanned developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights by astronauts. The program, which took its name from the god of travel in Roman mythology, cost $277 million in 1965 US dollars, and involved the work of 2 million people. The astronauts were collectively known as the "Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.