Home :: Books :: Home & Garden  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden

Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Supermarine Spitfire (Osprey Modelling Manuals 18)

Supermarine Spitfire (Osprey Modelling Manuals 18)

List Price: $17.95
Your Price: $12.21
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Useless
Review: For anyone with any experience, save your money and spend it on a kit or aftermarket materials rather than this book. You will get nothing from the book.

If you are an absolute beginner and want a look at what exists beyond "straight from the box" building, this begins to give you a look, although you would be better off investing in Kalmbach's P-40 or Me-109 books.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: A waste of money
Review: Unfortunately, this book shows it's age (it shows that Spanish original was published in 1992) and in its case this is not a good thing.

First, the choice of models - authors use Hasegawa's Mk.V's (in regular and trop versions) in "Modeling the Spitfire Mk.V" chapter, then convert Tamiya's Mk.Vb to Mk.IXc and build PR.XIX using multimedia model of unknown (or at least unknown to me) company called "Casadio" in chapter called "Building Other Spitfire Variants". They also try to describe other models and aftermarket items, but fail miserably in doing so.

Second, writing style reminds of a good, typical "feature article" that is now common on the modeling websites. There is some information in it, but it doesn't go deep enough to satisfy but the least experienced reader. For example authors only keep informing about steps taken - saying "Then we (...) re-engraved the joint lines" or "Lens covers can then simply be made by scratch building the parts". In the same spirit, authors somehow manage to describe process of converting wing from "b" to "c" configuration without giving away a single useful piece of advice!

Third, pictures don't help much. Some are very informative (definitively giving more information than text), but there is not enough of the ones that show the process. Instead there is a plenty of ones that show effects of authors actions. In case of converting Mk.V to Mk.IX authors describe little surgery they did on kits nose (replacing it with resin part) using maybe five, six sentences and give absolutely no pictures! The same happens with the above mentioned wing conversion. Can you imagine? The "meat" of the conversion is reduced to few remarks and what the reader is left with is nice description of painting the camouflage.

To summarize, even though this book is relatively cheap, your money will be better spent on other references. For example books from SAM Publications in their "datafile" series, even twice the price, offer much more "bang for the buck" than this "modelers reference" (quotes intentional).


<< 1 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates