Aircraft equipment sets supply what the box usually leaves out: underwing stores, ordnance and the ground kit that goes with them. The listing runs from iron bombs and guided weapons to rocket pods in resin and plastic, ammunition boxes with belted rounds, access steps for the F-16 or MiG-23 and jacks for a servicing scene. These are the parts that decide whether a finished model reads as a museum exhibit or as a machine being prepared for the next sortie. The notes below cover choosing by scale and by subject.
A kit often provides the pylons and nothing to hang on them, so the weapons have to be bought separately. This listing covers bombs from Soviet FAB types to American guided munitions, anti-ship missiles, rocket pods and air-to-air rounds. The second group is ground equipment: boarding steps, ladders, jacks and ammunition boxes with belted rounds, enough to build a convincing arming scene on the hardstanding. Builders of First World War subjects will also find separate aircraft machine gun sets that replace the simplified parts in the box.
A bomb in the wrong scale gives the game away instantly, so stay in the same series as the kit. For easier searching there are scale groups for 1:72 aircraft equipment sets, 1:48 aircraft equipment sets and 1:32 aircraft equipment sets, the last of which also holds the First World War gun sets. Occasional items in other scales stay in this top-level listing, so it is worth reading through as well.
Confirm what your aircraft actually carried, because an American missile under a Soviet wing is spotted at once. Set titles such as U.S. Aircraft Weapons or Russian Aircraft Weapons say it plainly, and for anything less obvious a reference book and period photographs settle the question. Watch the date as well, since stores changed far faster than airframes did.
Resin castings carry the finest detail on lugs and fins, take cyanoacrylate and should be washed in warm soapy water before painting. Plastic sets accept ordinary polystyrene cement and forgive a beginner more. Start with plastic and save resin for a competition build.
Stores only make sense under a well-chosen airframe, so begin in aircraft model kits and add the weapons in the same scale.
