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Ilyushin Il-28 - Warpaint #130 Guideline Publications This book is originally by author Nikolay Yakubovich, translated by Kevin Bridge, and covers the birth and development of the Iluyshin Il-28, known as the Beagle in NATO circles, the Soviet Union’s first medium jet bomber after WWII, thanks partly to the foolishness of the British Government at the time, who naively sold the Soviets examples of the Nene jet engine, allowing them to use them in projects until they could reverse-engineer their own, which they eventually improved upon as the RD-45. The Il-28 flew with two RD-45 engines slung under its straight wings in streamlined nacelles, topping 500mph with a crew of three and a reasonable bomb-load that it could haul a decent distance. The book is in the usual Warpaint format of portrait A4(ish) with a soft card cover but has an increased page count from the norm and utilises a perfect binding instead of the usual pair of staples to accommodate the total of 64 pages plus content printed on the four sides of the glossy covers, and a loose sheet of A2 plans in 1:72 printed on both sides and penned by the author. A long section details the birth of the type with its influences from captured Nazi designs such as the Arado Ar.234, the route to the finalised design, then the subsequent variants and history carries on throughout the book, incorporating a summary of the operational experiences of the bomber and its various incarnations. The pages include a lot of useful pictures with informative captions of aircraft on the apron, on the field, in the air, during trials, crashed and under maintenance with panels missing, plus appropriate photos and drawings dotted around, but the engineering-type drawings have Cyrillic text, so you'll have to rely on the captions unless you read Russian. The Colours & Markings section shows the narrow range of official schemes that the type was painted, but the many profiles illustrate that camouflage was applied at times where suitable. The "In Detail" section has some numbered close-up photos with matching captions providing excellent information that will be a boon to modellers as well as people that just like to know what everything does. My favourite variant is the ugly one of course, which is the two-cockpit trainer version that has a slight droop-snoot, although nothing quite so ugly as the Yak-38 or Mig-25 2-seaters. Gotta love ‘em! Conclusion The Warpaint series always gets a thumbs-up due to their inability to produce a bad one. This is an excellent book that will see plenty of use by anyone interest in, or building this semi-ubiquitous aircraft from the early Cold War. Very highly recommended. Review sample courtesy of

When I was nine years old our Cub Scout group attended the USAF airshow at RAF Bentwaters. I found myself alone admiring a beautiful sleek twin engined aeroplane in RAF Transport Command colours. It was an RAF Beagle Basset from a Communications Squadron and I was later interested to see that AIRFIX had a kit of one in their Series 2 range. One day a friend showed me his poorly made Basset model. It was moulded in a dark silver plastic with heavy rivets and quite clunky and this really disappointed this ten year old who would have expected AIRFIX to have moulded it in white plastic without so many rivets, like they did with their Handley Page Jetsream. It would be many years later before I was able to add a Basset to my collection. The original 1968 issue RAF Transport version was expensive if you could find one. I managed to find a 1970s issue of the Reagle Beagle, a Basset which was assigned to the Royal Flight in 1969 and in which HRH Prince Charles took twin-engine pilot training. It was a fair price because it had no decals. This was the model that I built. I later acquired an original 1968 Transport Command Basset. I built this model about two years ago and took a small number of photos during the build. Most of the photos will be of the completed model so that is why I have posted it here. The 1970s issue of the Reagle Beagle which is the kit I built. The original 1968 kit which I can remember being on display in Woolworths in Woodbridge. Parts moulded in the typical dark silver plastic of the time. Plenty of rivets for the AIRFIX enthusiast. Hope I can make a worthy job of this, I have waited a long time. Those wonderful AIRFIX instruction sheets of the period that explained in words what every part was and where it went. I finally decided on a colour for the interior and now we are at the stage for closing up. Instrument panel had to be fettled to raise it higher. Required nose weight in place and glued so we don't get any annoying rattles later. Those lovely 1960s pilots will always have a place in my models. I adapt them to fit the cockpit by seperating legs and reposing the heads.

Academy’s new tool 1/72 F-15E. By now we’ve all see and heard of the terrible exhausts. That’s really the only huge drawback. I remedied that with the Aires nozzles. Easy peasy. I added a GBU-31 JDAM, GBU-12 Paveways and a an AIM-9L, but everything else was OOB. The fit was excellent, absolutely NO filler was used in this build. Solid 4-Star kit!

First time I hear about a 1/48th Il-28 "Beagle" project by AMK/AvantGarde Model Kits. Source: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234946328-mig-31bm-avantgarde-model-148/?p=2021098 AMK rumours recap: - AMD-BA Super Etendard was announced a loooonnng time ago. In de meantime Kinetic has also announced one... - Aero L-39 Albatros: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981743-148-aero-l-39-albatros-avantgarde-model-kits-2017/ - Mil Mi-24 "Hind": http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981741-148-mil-mi-24-hind-avantgarde-model-kits - Mil Mi-8 "Hip": http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981742-148-mil-mi-8-hip-avantgarde-model-kits/ - Considering the current strong AMK Czech connections, a 1/48th Ilyushin Il-28 "Beagle" make sense. It's noted that Xuntong Model is also working on a 1/48th "Beagle" family: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234980747-148-ilyushin-il-28-beagle-by-xuntong-model-cads/ V.P.

Xuntong Model Bobcat Hobby Model Kits is to release (in 2019) a 1/48th Ilyushin Il-28 "Beagle" kit - ref. 48006 In fact the Il-28T Soviet Navy Torpedo-Bomber type but I suppose all the other variants are in the pipeline! Sources: http://www.xtmodel.com.cn/html/2015/pexplain_0420/21.html http://www.moxing.net/bbs/thread-48816-1-1.html http://www.greenmats.club/topic/417-ил-28-в-148-от-xuntong-model/#comment-3732 3D renders V.P.

Russian usually well-informed homepage scalemodels.ru reports that Czech company HpH is working on a 1/48th Il-28 Beagle kit. Watch this space for further developments. http://www.hphmodels.cz/index.php/en/shop-2/produkty-hph-models/modely-v-meritku-1-48/iljusin-il-28-in-scale-1-48-detail V.P.