Croco 1/72 Iomax Archangel Weapons Set

The Ayres Thrush, formerly the Snow S-2, Aero Commander Ag Commander, and Rockwell Thrush Commander, is an American agricultural aircraft produced by Ayres Corporation and more recently by Thrush Aircraft. It is one of the most successful and long-lived agricultural application aircraft types in the world, with almost 2,000 sold since the first example flew 63 years ago. Typical of agricultural aircraft, it is a single-seat monoplane of conventional taildragger configuration. Originally powered by a radial piston engine, most examples produced since the 1980s have been turboprop-powered.

Ayres developed a special anti-narcotics crop-spraying version of the Turbo-Thrush for the United States Department of State. This version, known as the Narcotics Eradication Delivery System (NEDS) featured an armored cockpit and engine to protect against hostile ground fire. Nine were sold to the Department of State between 1983 and 1985. Ayres also attempted to market a militarized version as the Ayres Vigilante, intended for the Close Air Support role, but this failed to attract customers.IOMAX USA of North Carolina, which had previously modified Air Tractor AT-802 agricultural aircraft as reconnaissance/attack aircraft, has developed the Archangel attack aircraft modeled on the S-2R-660. The United Arab Emirates has ordered 24 Archangels, with delivery from June 2015. The Archangel is powered by a 1,600 shp (1,200 kW) PT6A-67F engine. Fitted with 6 hardpoints for 6,000 lb (2,700 kg) of external stores

For those of you who read the preview today, you are aware that the kit only provides a single pair of rocket pods. Now it is true that warplanes spend 99% of their time sitting on the ground unarmed. However, modelers like their planes to be armed, especially attack types.

So Croco has provided a full set of weapons for you to properly max out the load on your Archangel. The set is superbly cast and provides a fairly good size photo etch fret for the fins of the bombs and missiles.

You get a pair of rocket pods, four laser guided bombs, four Hellfire missiles and three other missiles. These latter ones are quite short and are mounted on a centerline pylon that I assume can be installed in place of the FLIR. All of the required adapters are provided either as p.e. or resin.

Instructions are shown above and are well drawn so you should have no issues in that regard. These weapons could also be used on other kits besides this one.

If you like your light attack planes fully loaded, then you should order this set along with your Archangel kit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayres_Thrush

March 2019

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Thanks to Croco for the preview item. Contact them at sniff23@inbox.lv for information and costs. You can also find these on ebay.