Agora Models is a UK company based in London, England that specializes in high-quality large scale models. Agora has administrative offices in Tokyo Japan, North Carolina, US, and in the United Kingdom. The models are shipped from five warehouses around the globe. The first IPMS review sample SAS Jeep Pack 1 was sent from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA.

Agora ships its models in 12 monthly parts, called ‘Packs’, that can spread the cost and workload over a longer period. The cost of a model does not change as the Packs are delivered. Agora continues production of the kit as Packs are released and does not release the first Pack without assurances that they can produce all parts of the kit. After production is complete, all Packs of a particular kit can be purchased at one time.

MiniArt adds decals, profiles, etch & sprue layouts to the preview of their Mercedes 170V series with this Kfz.2 German Communications Car Type 170VK in 1/35th scale. See all of the kit in our preview today...Read on... »

Casemate Publishing is distributing the 51 installment of the “Europe At War” series. This book is devoted to the P-40 aircraft in the Soviet Far North (Murmansk to Kirkenes area) while in service with the Soviet Navy Aviation.

Finding details of western aircraft while in service with the Soviets is hard to come by. This book - together with the rest of the series devoted to the Kittyhawks in Soviet service- fills in a gap in historical documentation.

The author utilizes both Soviet sources and German sources and combine them to provide a comprehensive and well-balanced narrative of the events during 1944 in northern Scandinavia. By that year, the Kittyhawks in Soviet Service were being used in a fighter-bomber role rather than air-to-air, as covered in Volume 1.

In the Box

The kit is a typical top opening box with 11 gray sprues, 1 clear parts sprue, 1 photo-etched (PE) sheet, and 1 die-cut masking sheet for the clear parts. Academy takes advantage of slide-molding to add more detail in raised rivet and recessed panel lines and the results are impressive. Also of note, sprue B & D comes from the AH-1Z Viper kit (Kit No: 12127) since in real life both helicopters use the same parts. For a list of unused parts, see page 14 in the bottom right of the instructions.

The box art is beautiful. For modelers who are wavering on owning this kit, it will help push them over the edge to build this Venom or add it to the collection.

The ATR was a joint venture by French (Aerospatiale) and Italian (Aeritalia) to design a short-to-medium haul feeder airliner. The “42” designated that it had 42 seats. It has been a successful and reliable airliner in many countries around the world.

X-Scale Models, from Ukraine, has now released its latest model kit in 1/144 scale with an American Eagle ATR-42-300 that served out of Chicago’s O’Hare airport. X-Scale also included a date of 1996. The subject aircraft in this box, currently flies for Fed Ex.

These are 1/700 scale resin kits produced by Ralph Ratcliffe during the 1990's. They represent the Sturgeon class SSN 637, the early 688 Los Angeles class, the later 688I (Improved) class, with bow planes in place of sail planes, VLS hatches for the Tomahawk missiles, a ring propeller to protect it for under ice operations, and stern anhedrals for stability and housing countermeasure launchers. The final submarine is the USS Seawolf, lead ship of what was planned as 29 new SSNs. The hull diameter was increased from 33 feet (688 class) to 40 feet, and equipped with a pump jet propulsor. The Seawolf class hull was constructed of HY-100 steel rather than the previous HY-80, and this increased the test depth of the Seawolf class. The Seawolf weapons load out was much increased and 8 torpedo tubes fitted over the previous 4 of the LA and Sturgeon classes. With the end of the Cold War, the Seawolf program was drastically curtailed. The only Seawolf class submarines completed were SSN-21 Seawolf, SSN-22 Connecticut, and the modified SSN-23, Jimmy Carter.

One of the submarines in the last class (Benjamin Franklin class) of the 41 Polaris/Poseidon ballistic missile submarines. In 1979, the Bolivar entered overhaul and conversion of her ballistic missile system to support Trident C-4 ballistic missiles. She patrolled along with the early Ohio class SSBNs. Bolivar continued to make deterrent patrols, undergoing occasional refits at Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia. Bolivar successfully launched a Trident test missile. SSBN 641 continued to make deterrent patrols until 1994. The model is a resin and metal kit from the now defunct Yankee Model Works.

Following WWII, the US had a large number of relatively new diesel fleet submarines. Although these were very successful in the Pacific War, the technology and development of the German Type XXI U-boats pointed to a future in which more capabilities would be necessary. The US Navy embarked on a program to modify and upgrade some of the newer fleet submarines. The overall program was termed Guppy (Greater Underwater Propulsion Program, with the Y added). This meant streamlining the submarines by removing deck guns and adding a "step sail" in early conversions, upgrading batteries (and in some of the modifications such as Guppy II, doubling the battery cells) and adding a snorkel. The snorkel meant that the diesels could be run while submerged, recharging the batteries. These conversions (Guppy I, Ia and II) were carried out in the 1950's. With a lag in nuclear attack submarine building in the early 1960's, a small number of Guppy II submarines were selected for a further upgrade, termed Guppy III. These submarines already had the doubling of battery cells, and as an initial step, a new sail, termed the High Atlantic sail was fitted. This was an improvement on the earlier "step sails" which had the bridge watch crew at a lower level (see my earlier build of Becuna on this forum). In Atlantic storms, crews on the step sail would get soaked with cold water from waves coming over the bow. The Atlantic sail got the watch crew up higher off the deck. In addition, the submarines were cut apart forward of the sail, and a 15 foot long "plug" was added to create space for a dedicated sonar room. Also added was the BQG-4 PUFFS passive ranging sonar, which are the three "fins" on the deck. With PUFFS, the length of the submarine was used as a baseline to triangulate a bearing to a target by the time of arrival of the sonar signals at the 3 PUFFS sonar receiver units. The GUPPY III submarines filled the gap for patrols until the SSN program accelerated with the Permit and Sturgeon classes. In the early-mid 1970's, all of the diesel GUPPY III class were retired, some 30 years after they were initially built as WWII fleet submarines. This resin kit was from the now defunct Yankee ModelWorks. It depicts USS Clamagore in its GUPPY III configuration. Clamagore was the last remaining GUPPY III and was a museum boat in South Carolina. However the museum could not maintain upkeep and it was scrapped in 2022. I was fortunate in visiting in 2018 and took plenty of photos with my Nikon DSLR for reference.

This is the Iron Shipwrights 1/350 scale Richard B. Russell. It was the last numbered Sturgeon class submarine built prior to the Los Angeles class. In August 1977, the Russell was fitted with a large housing ("bustle") attached to her hull just aft of her sail, containing a tethered antenna buoy. Russell was one of the later "long hull" Sturgeon submarines, stretched from 292 feet to 302 feet in length. Russell was equipped as a Special Projects submarine and operated with other Projects submarines (Seawolf SSN 575 and Parche SSN 683) out of Mare Island.

This is the Iron Shipwrights kit of the last Seawolf class submarine. The Jimmy Carter had an additional 100 foot section added amidships for "ocean engineering". This gave it the capability to [classified], [classified] and [classified].

Airfix has released news of their new-tooled 1/24th scale Messerschmitt Bf109G-5/6 kit that will be making its preview at the Telford Model Show this weekend. We look at it in our preview.Read on... »

I am trying to put together for my grandchildren a little bit of my 20 years in tthe Army as a paratooper in the 82nd ABN DIV. I want to hang all the aircraft I jumped out of on the ceiling in our officee but I cannot find a C-141 that is priced reasonably. My hands shake something aweful from the medicine that I take and I would never get a model together.l A hobby shop mentionied your organization and I was wondering if I bought the kit mailed it to you could you put it together for me and mail it back and I coulid pay you for your service. Thanks in advance,

Five releases from Italeri with lots to choose from in different scales & genres this month. Check them out in art, plastic, colours, decals & info in our preview...Read on... »

THis is my 1/48 scale Mongram Flak Bait . I have always loved this plane and wanted to do it justice as she sits right now. The interior is a combination of plastic from the kit and a paper model kit of the B-26 plus some other parts from paper kits for details. I will be doing the entire plane as she sits right now . Thanks for looking

MiniArt's military mover version of the Fordson tractor N Mod. 1940-41 "Green" in 35th scale is next. We look at the sprue layout, kit features & the real tractors in our preview...Read on... »

MasterBox brings us two new sets of warriors on two very different raids in their latest releases. See what to expect in our preview...Read on... »

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The Five Triple P hosts and special guests Peter Fidloczky and Jackson Stanton recap our amazing trip to Europe and our attendance at Scale Model Challenge 2025 in Eindhoven, Netherlands. 

We hope you enjoy our recap of our adventures at the show, as well as a bunch of Europe's finest military history museums including Bovington, Duxford, Bastogne Barracks, and Overloon just to name a few. We had a great time and all of us are mojo recharged in a major way! 

Join us for some thought provoking discussion about scale models! 

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Border Model's new Heinkel He-111 H-6 in 1/35th scale now has pilots & crew to inhabit it. CADs of the promised resin in our preview...Read on... »

The following is taken directly from the publication:

The REFERENCES series books are a compilation of photographs, illustrations and drawings already published in other KAGERO PUBLISHING series as well as content that have not been released there yet due to lack of space. The REFERENCES will also feature previously unedited material.

What You Get

An 8.5 x 11.5 soft-bound book.

A small set of decals for Bf 110 C-1, L1 + IH in 1/72 and 1/48 scale.

The book has a glossy heavy card-stock cover enclosing 26 pages of heavyweight paper. All photos are black and white. Text/captions are in the original Polish with English translations underneath.

The first 12 pages contain 13 photos of Bf 110 C variants C-1, C-2, C-4, and C-7.

A series of books from Kagero that is new to me is the TOP COLOR Series. This issue focuses on the Bf-109 in Combat.

The book comes in a protective sleeve to keep the package safe. This is important because this 8 x 11 book contains 11 full color profiles of various versions of the Messerschmitt. Many of the profiles have four view profiles, but even those that aren’t are quite colorful. There are nine Emils, one Dora and one Friedrich. So, this book focuses on the early versions of the 109. It’s interesting to see the evolution of the markings and camouflage from the Spanish Civil War to the Battle of Britain. My two favorite ones are the desert camouflaged one with different color wings and a Jabo.

Each aircraft is captioned in English and Polish. There is a lot of cool information in there.