Eduard 1/350
Aircraft Carrier Figures

Eduard from the Czech Republic is easily the most prolific producer of aftermarket details. Period. Their series of photo-etched detail sets have brought additional fidelity to otherwise bland subjects, and have taken even the best-produced models and kicked them up a notch or two with details that cannot be produced with injection-molded plastic.

When Eduard first introduced the acetate-printed instrument faces that go behind their photo-etched aircraft instrument panels, this raised the bar on model cockpit reality as you could almost read the time on the aircraft clock. How could they top that?

It took a number of years, but the answer is color photo-etch. Somehow Eduard has developed a process for printing color directly on their photo-etched parts such that now you not only can read the instrument faces, you can now see the color warning arcs around airspeed indicators and color reference circles around Luftwaffe flight and engine instruments. So how can they top that?

What is the one thing that adds life to a scale ship model? Well, that is the answer really - life. Figures. For some time, a variety of vendors have produced 1/350 photo-etched figures to position around the flightdeck of your masterpiece, but they were bare metal. Painting 1/350 figures does not sound like my idea of fun.

Eduard to the rescue! They've taken their color photo-etch and done something I've not seen before. With their aircraft and armor detail sets, they only have to color print one side of their parts to get the job done. But think about it, if they printed color on only one side of these figures, you wouldn't be much better off.

If you look at the images to the right, you can see that this is the same fret of photo-etch imaged from front and back. You can see that Eduard has printed color on BOTH sides of the photo-etched figures. What's more, they have printed on detail that looks as good up close under a magnifying glass (click on an image) as it does from here. Good luck trying to achieve that level of detail painting by hand!

This set is even more impressive (to me) than the 17501 set I reviewed previously as these figures have the various colors of their departments, but they also have additional identifying marks printed on their backs as well. This it truly some impressive work!

While these will still look thin from the sides, you now have THE BEST figures ever produced in this scale now available for your projects.

How cool is this?

Recommended for experienced modelers!