Greysnake,
That M3 Lee was my first Taimiya armor kit! One of my father's friends gave it to me for Christmas back in 1976 or so. I had no knowlege of Tamiya until I laid eyes on that kit - and I was stunned at the overall quality of the parts, packaging, and instructions. And I stretched my first sprue antenna for that kit! I have been a fan ever since.
This showed up yesterday:
It is meant to replace the nose of the awful Airfix 1/48 B-57G. The kit's chin sensor fairing is about half the actual width, the cockpit is complete fiction, and the forward fuselage has a weird bulged contour. This resin set by Dmold from Russia replaces the entire forward fuselage, including the cockpit and transparencies. Overall molding of the parts looks good on initial inspection, but the clear parts are slightly cloudy and have some marks which will need to be sanded/polished out. That's not a really serious gripe, as I know how incredibly hard it is to cast perfect clear parts. The kit's seats and control stick are to be used, but I already have appropriate resin seats.
And from Latvia comes the base kit I needed to do the JASDF E-767 AWACS conversion:
I immediately noticed the flexy clear window strips, apparently a Zvezda thing in their airliner kits. No matter, as I will fill in the window openings with strip plastic and putty. Now to do a little research on the antennas the plane used, as Zvezda surprisingly does not include any at all!