[PeterL]

TG: "And what the heck is PE? *Wood glue?"

Photo-Etched detail parts, usually brass, sometimes nickel. It was a big thing with ship modelers and railway modelers for decades before we *aeroplane people caught on. Harry Woodman with his background in scratchbuilding warships had a lot to do with the crossover but it's origins as a modeling material are in the US I believe. Very nice for ships hand rails, locomotive parts and so on, but as I get older and grumpier I am less happy with some the applications in our area of the hobby. For instance, etched wire wheels, at first a breathtaking inovation, look very crude alongside a scratchbuilt equivalent. Machine gun jackets are fine, particularly in larger scales, control horns, bomb racks, stuff like that, but there are an awful lot of things that just don't work IMO.