When you browse your references for different models you can easily find a scene from the air base when a certain plane is being maintained by a ground crew. Many times next to the plane you can notice a lot of different types of armament awaiting to be hanged under the wings stores or fuselage. As an addition to the scenes of this type, depicted in 1:48 scale, Aerobonus has a quite useful item.

The item I mean is a Soviet Weapons Loading Cart. Aerobonus is not giving any particular type of the cart. It is pity as I always like to know the full name or type of scaled down item, however in my references and internet I have found few very similar, nearly identical, to the reviewed one. As far as I recognized the item, this cart can be used for example together with FAB bombs or UB-16/UB-32 unguided missiles launchers. However I still do not know what is the official type of this cart. This item is most probably intended by Aerobonus to be just an addition to the main topic of airfield diorama.

Ok, let's see what's in the box. The resin comes in a plastic box in a well known style from many other producers. Resin parts are secured in the box by a sponge which prevents from a damage when the box is being shaken during transport but it does not prevent the damage after stronger crushing. Beside sponge and some resin we also get a small assembly instruction. It is plain and clear, no worries about missing something or misinterpreting some step.

The cart consists of 24 parts which comes on seven blocks. All casting are clean and free of any seam lines or raised edges. You just need to pay attention while cutting pats from the blocks. For the smallest ones you can easily use a sharp knife of scalpel but other will require a modellers' razor saw. There is also not much to say here. As the original construction is made of simple tee bars, flat bars or channel bars without any special decorative details, Aerobonus product looks similar is style. There are not many details. Designers have paid some attention to create nice rubber pouches on the control levers. As we are at the control items of this vehicle there is no plumbing system on resin parts. The cart was equipped with hydraulic system for lifting the armament mounting but producer did not include it in this scale replica. I also do not see a servomotor arm or anything like that. It would be also a nice addition to see a photo-etched parts of control wheels for adjusting final position of the cradle seen on the real cart. These are quite obvious omissions but I'm sure that more advanced modellers will not have any serious problems to made these few details from scratch. In my set one of the lifting arms is bent. I will have to try to heat it somehow and straighten a bit. No biggie, sometimes it happens with resin although generally it should not.

Generally this set solves at least one problem of displaying more armament of the particular airplane than just this hanged on the racks. With additional work it can be even a subject for a separate diorama or vignette. If it only was done with more details it would be a nearly perfect addition for your models, now it's only good.

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