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Miniworld |
1/72 Vickers Mk.I Machine Gun For appropriate WW1 aircraft subjects |
Stock Number: A72-14 |
Reviewed By John Ratzenberger, IPMS# 40196 |
MSRP: $5.00 Website: www.hobbyterra.com When I saw this on the "Stuff Available List", I did a quick Google and came up with several online stores, HobbyTerra being one, where the item was described as: The Vickers machine gun or Vickers gun is a name primarily used to refer to the water-cooled .303 inch (7.7 mm) machine gun produced by Vickers Limited, originally for the British Army. The machine gun typically required a six- to eight-man team to operate: one to fire, one to feed the ammunition, and the rest to help carry the weapon, its ammunition and spare parts. It served from before the World War I until after the end of the World War II.So, I was thinking "Neat, I'll get a ground mount Vickers to build, even if I probably can't see it real well.", although I should have connected the dots better given that all their other products were aircraft guns. Well, as you can pretty well tell from the "box art" photo, it isn't a ground mount -- and I still can't see it. But, isn't it a beauty? Made from brass, it is so finely done -- you can't get this same level in styrene, resin, white metal, or photoetch, even at larger scales. The barrel is nicely drilled out. I tried to count the ribs and such on the barrel to see if they matched my references, but they are just too small -- sure does look right. I don't have an appropriate WW1 aircraft in 1/72 to mount it on, but I do have the Airfix DH-4 waiting an Allan Hall style conversion to a DH-9, so I laid the Miniworld gun next to the kit gun and a sheet of TOM's WW1 British Guns photoetch. Obviously superior to the kit guns and obviously a lot less work than a half-dozen tiny PE parts. Instructions are minimal, consisting of a list of aircraft to be used on and a two-color paint guide in Russian -- and of course y'all recognize the colors as wood and gun-metal, right ?. So, highly recommended -- if you have to have some really catchy additions to a WW1 bird, this gun has to rank high up there, particularly at the very low price. All that may be missing is a short (dozen-rounds) length of ammo belt for those aircraft that might not have a covered feed chute. What also caught my eye, and what I already have on order, are several combinations of Lewis Guns and Scarff Ring Mounts -- they really look amazing and are around $12 each. My sincere thanks to HobbyTerra for the review sample and to IPMS/USA for allowing me to review it. |
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