introduction

This DVD from HungAeroDecals, once inserted in my computer, ran without any problems and scanned clean without issue. There were no programs that needed to be downloaded or run to use this DVD.

contents

The organization of the DVD is approximately 3800 pictures contained within 189 folders. Many folders are of similar vehicles but from different years or events. Organized by vehicle type and date of photos taken, there end up being several folders of photos of some vehicle types, but with a little digging you can find some nice interior shots and/or detail shots of unique equipment on the vehicle.

At the top of the folder listing there is one marked "Important" that has 2 PDF files in it, one (List of Contents) that lists the date the DVD was produced and files listed with information on vehicle type, photographer, location, date, and quantity of photos in them. The other (Readme) has contact and acknowledgment information.

The photo's themselves are of very high quality and of large size: the smallest photo size I found was 1656 x 1242 and they all were in the 500 KB range. Years listed for the photography ran from 2004 to 2009. The range of vehicles is also good in that they have, for example in wheeled APC's, the BTR-152 to the BTR-80A, an excellent resource for a good part of the Cold War and beyond.

Each folder appears to have a good mix of up-close detail shots, mid range shots, and longer range all-encompassing shots, to give a feel of what is being photographed and what details may be unique to the vehicle itself. For example, there is a folder of shots of the Sznar-10 Battlefield Radar (Snar-10). The folder contains shots that look inside the open-door rear of the MT-LB chassis showing the interior equipment unique to this battlefield radar close up. The photographer also climbed on an adjacent vehicle to get some shots of the top of the Sznar-10 including the folded down radar.

One of the potential downfalls of the DVD is that these are photos of HDF vehicles and unless you want to model the HDF in particular, you will need to know what may have changed from, for example, Russian to Hungarian service or what may have been "modified" by the HDF. (An example is the naming of the vehicle referenced above: Sznar-10 is the Hungarian name and Snar-10 is the Russian name. There could be other changes, besides just the naming differences.) There is no mention on the DVD of what changes may have been made from a standard Soviet stock vehicle. However, knowing this, the viewer gets a lot of good detailed shots to compare to any other vehicle used by other nations.

conclusion

This is a reference DVD on equipment serving with the Hungarian Defense Forces (HDF). While most of the vehicles pictured are ex-Soviet in origin, there are some on the extended DVD that are German derived. Other options offered with the DVD are a "basic" version (83 fewer folders of smaller sets of pictures) and DVD's with decals for Hungarian T-55/T-72's in either 1/72 or 1/35 scale.