World of Firepower 04-05/2013

STANDARDIZING FIREARMS ACROSS A LAW ENFORCEMENT TEAM MIGHT SEEM LIKE A SIMPLISTIC EXERCISE. But as the Fayetteville, North Carolina, Police Department discovered, the positive effects can be far reaching. About two years ago, the Fayetteville Emergency Response Team (SWAT) acted on an initiative to standardize ammunition and weapons department-wide. At the time, the Emergency Response Team carried Glock 21s, with .45-caliber Automatic Colt Pistol (ACP) ammunition. The majority of the Fayetteville Police Department was carrying Glock 22s, with a few Glock 23s and 27s depending on assignment, each of which used .40-caliber Smith & Wesson ammunition. "Our main goal was to select a firearm that used .40 caliber S&W ammunition, which matched the rest of the Police Department," says Sgt. W. A. Holland, Training Sergeant with the Emergency Response Team.

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World of Firepower 06-07/2013

SNIPER AND SURVEILLANCE OPERATIONS PRESENT INHERENT DANGERS FOR THE MILITARY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT. In most cases, personnel are required to visually explore a location by sticking their heads up or by knocking conspicuous holes in walls, often in dangerous conditions such as hostile militarized zones. The practice potentially exposes team members to life-threatening enemy fire, as well as possibly discloses coalition force locations to the enemy. But that's no longer the case. Periscopes have long been used on submarines to enable observations above the ocean's surface. The simple mechanics behind periscopes are now being applied on land to help save the lives of numerous deployed soldiers and SWAT team members. Recognizing the need for a simple solution for SWAT teams, Tony Leonti developed the patented SWATSCOPE to help improve visual surveillance tactics. U.S. Army and Marine Corps members quickly adopted the device.

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Flight International Oct 22, 2013

GE Aviation is to manufacture the engines for Bell Helicopter's V-280 Valor third-generation tiltrotor, the airframer has announced. Bell has not revealed which specific GE powerplant will be used with the V-280, but says that government funding from the US Army's future affordable turbine engine (FATE) programme will allow it to provide a "robust, durable engine". GE has previously said that technologies developed through FATE, such as advanced cooling systems, could be inserted directly into its GE38 engine, which will power Sikorsky's CH-53K heavy-lift helicopter, in development for the US Marine Corps. More than 3,100h of testing has been completed on the 7,500shp-class (5,520kW) GE38, with GE expecting to receive full military certification sometime next year. The CH-53K is due to be flown for the first time at the end of 2014. The GE38 is in the same thrust-range as Rolls-Royce's AE1107C Liberty engine, two of which power the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey tiltrotor. Bell has additionally con-firmed that UK-based aerostructures specialist GKN is to design and manufacture the V-280's V-tail and "ruddervator" components. Bell's medium-lift V-280 Valor is seen as a potential replacement for the US Army's current Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk utility helicopters. The company says its design will be able to fly twice as fast at the in-service type, and have a deploy able range of 2,100nm (3,890km).

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Model Laboratory No.3

The original idea was to do an armored vehicle with numerous impacts -historically documented in several episodes- where these "beasts" were reached by a fair amount of hits, but in spite of those it kept working. Several research pictures showing armored vehicles with different hits, pictures of the specific vehicle, of vehicles in the same unit, etc. were used for backup. Taken all research materials into account, we've gotten to this "313" belonging to the 505, as being a unit received on July the 8th 1943, with camouflage which was intended for the African scenario, where this vehicle never did actually set tracks upon. The fact that all the vehicles of this unit have the same camouflage pattern, allows us to infer that these were not repainted in a provisional fashion while fighting in the front. That is why we've portrayed this vehicle with the RAL 8020 "Braun" -base paint for the African scenario being the norm since March 1942- and RAL 8017 "Rotbraun" designated as a secondary color following the February 1943 norm. The Tamiya kit is an excellent and very true kit with a wonderful parts fit and a good mold. It has few mold ejector marks, and these are well placed. However the level of detailing has been surpassed by other brands and that is why we absolutely need a number of other products and accessories in order to make the finest kit possible.

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Model Laboratory No.2

Considering the fact that 16000 units with tens of variants were built of this plane; its basic structure never suffered radical changes, which proves the overall quality of the original design. However, at first the number of different uses this plane was eventually put to was never a factor taken into consideration, because the German Air Ministry (RLM) was never too confident with the success of this project, and commanded instead a fast bombardier able to carry a war load of 1800kg and to be able to reach a speed of 500km/h... almost the same speed that the newly born Hawker
Hurricane plane made. Three projects were proposed: The Henschel Hs 127, the Messerschmitt Bf 162 and the Ju 88. The first two were rejected for a number of reasons, and the Junkers followed through. Its first prototype the Ju 88 VI, crashed when performing a high speed test, but nevertheless having proven its correct design. Later prototypes got motor adjustments, cabin, weapons, etc. until the right configuration was found. In 1939 the Ju 88 was finally revealed to the world, after having kept it a secret to the British Secret Services for three years. Ernst Zindel was the engineer who took all the credit for it, but two American engineers' expert in the field of paneling worked on the project as well.

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Model Laboratory No.1

This Dragon kit has been chosen to reproduce a late Panther unit because of its overall quality and moderate price. The kit includes an adequate photo etched sheet that will help us even more when reproducing the finer details. The plastic pieces are assembled without problems or major issues, bearing always in mind those pieces that will eventually be substituted for other ones or refined in some way. I fixed the excessive symmetry of the armored vehicle by substituting one of the steel wheels for one of the old ones with the rubber band around it. This is basically it for this section, so I invite you to bear with me while you follow the assembly and painting stages that come next. We've chosen to decorate this late Panther unit using a rather curious light camouflage scheme. The camouflage spots are well defined and their edges are pretty well defined as well. This pattern creates in some areas some thin color threads of the original base color between the camouflage spots. In order to reproduce this we will have to prepare well our airbrush kit, cleansing it to perfection and doing some previous color tests on a piece of paper before touching the camouflaged surfaces of the kit. I don't want to give lengthy explanations here so I've chosen to show the process on the pictures and the captions underneath in the pages that follow.

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