Air Intelligence

1/72 Aircraft Modeler's Guide 1998
By Michael Benolkin
Published by TacAir Publications

Reviewed by Will Riepl

Have you ever wondered just what kits and accessories there are for your dream project? Trying to track down all of the kits of, say, a 1/72 Heinkel He219 might be somewhat easy, but how about all of the aftermarket accessories for that plane? If you want to put all the possible detail into that kit, then this is the book for you. Every available 1/72 kit is listed, along with every available accessory and decal sheet for that plane. The listings are arranged according to plane designation, so to use our sample of the He219, we turn to the H page and find under He219 that there are kits from Airmodel (yeah! I'll take 12!), DML (2 variants), Revell, and Shanghai Dragon. Then we get the accessory list with detail sets from Airwaves, Cooper Details, Eduard, Engines & Things, Squadron, and True Details.

Decals are available from Aeromaster and Aviation Usk. Thus armed, you can take the kit of your choice, detail it with the appropriate parts, decal it with your choice of decals, and you never have to wonder if you missed that one decal sheet with the neat scheme, or that super-nice resin engine.

With the growing number of new kits and detail sets coming out each week, this book would quickly become outdated in a matter of months. To counteract this, TacAir Publications posts updates to this guide on their website, allowing you to keep your book current and up to date. For those of you who prefer 1/48 modeling, TacAir also has a similar volume for that scale.

Even if you just build out of the box and don't ever use aftermarket detail sets, this book is of great value, as you can find all of those planes you have always wanted to model. For those of you who like putting in every little bit of detail in your models, this is one book your library should not be without.

Highly recommended.

Review sample provided by TacAir Publications.