Aces High Silver Wing Special Review

By Michael Benolkin

Review

Aces High Magazine has produced this 'Silver Wings' special edition which provides several in-depth builds that receive bare metal finishes. Many modelers are intimidated by bare metal finishes because silver can highlight any flaw in the model, but the authors walk you through their techniques for assembling and preparing their projects for bare metal.

What is interesting in this special is that the authors show how to render historically realistic bare metal subjects. If you look at the bare metal B-26 Marauder for example, weathering is kept to a minimum since these aircraft didn't typically last long enough to get seriously weathered. The Hungarian Air Force MiG-21MF did remain in service for many years in bare metal and this build shows some interesting techniques I've not considered for bare metal (including the salt technique more common with camouflage finishes). The bare metal subjects covered in this title include:

• B-26C Marauder 'The Flying Barracuda' (Hasegawa 1/72)
• MiG-21MF Magyar Silver Arrow (Trumpeter 1/32)
• P-51D Mustang (Tamiya 1/32)
• F9F-5 Panther 'Blue Tail Fly' (Fisher Models 1/32)
• F-101C Voodoo (Kitty Hawk 1/48)
• Auxiliary Fuel Tanks

If you're paying attention while scanning through this title, you'll note some amusing errors such as the box art of the kit supposedly used in that build. For example, the box art for the MiG-21MF build is the Trumpeter 1/32 MiG-21F-13 (close, but no cigar) and the box art for the F9F-5 is the Fisher Model 1/32 F9F-8 (ditto). Despite these minor production bugs, what is top quality are each of the builds and the detailed photo coverage of the steps to get them to that level of quality.

This is one of those publications that you'll want to keep on your shelf for future reference. Definitely recommended!

My sincere thanks to Aces High Magazine for this review copy!