It was great to get the latest RT in the mails. I'm quite pleased that they are able to keep up their publication schedule as often club magazines are quite late compared to the date on the cover. This edition continues in the format of the recent editions and has 36 full color pages. Though this probably happened several issues ago, I notice that the quality of the paper has also improved over the years.

Thanks to some coverage of Canadian subjects from the IPMS/USA nationals, there are four major articles in this edition. The Best Canadian Aircraft graces the front cover.

First is Bruce Archer's article on building a Seafire XV 'An Easier Way'. In this article Bruce does a major kit-bash basing his Seafire on the Airfix Mk.XII and if one counts his use of two of these kits, six kits as well as two major Aeroclub aftermarket sets are used to make what is truly a superb model.

Just as an aside, it always brings a smile to my lips when I read an article about a modeler not wanting to spend a lot of money on a dedicated and pretty accurate kit of a subject (in this case the Special Hobby Seafire XV) and then goes on to use additional kits and bits to do a project, the total of which would be well more than the dedicated kit. True, Bruce probably had many of the bits he used from other kits on hand, but anyone wanting to replicate Bruce's work who started from square one would spend a lot more than picking up the SH kit from the get-go. 

Second is a continuation of the excellent set of Canadian Ventura profiles by Terry Higgins and Carl Vincent. For those interested, Aviaeology has released many of the previous works on decals.

Next, Ken Kolenovsky shows his building expertise to build a 1/48 Steyr 2cm Flak 38 AA gun truck. Ken uses two kits (Tamiya and CMK) as the basis for this model along with a few aftermarket sets. The article is informative and the finished product is superb.

Finally, Tony Whittingham does a 'whiffer' to make a 1/72 Orion AEW.1 by adding the rotodome from a 1/72 Fujimi E-2 to a Hasegawa P-3. Well, at least that is the basics, though there is a lot more to it than that. The end result is something interesting to say the least.

There are also the usual columns we get in every issue of R/T. It makes for another superb issue that is read in far too short a time, but well worth the work that has gone into it.

How do you get this great edition? Simply join IPMS Canada and trade money for magazines. It is well worth it. 

September 2014

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