Fantastic detail update to the Academy Sea Stallion cockpit and cabin
Cons
Skill Level
Intermediate
MSRP (USD)
$7.95
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 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.
In this release, Eduard has produced a set of photo-etched details
for the magnificent Academy/MRC 1/48 CH-53E Sea Stallion kit.
This set consists of a fret of seatbelts and lug rings. Take a
close look at the color photo-etch image, not only are the seatbelts
printed in color, you can see the manufacturer's data tag stitched
on the end of each belt! Now that is detail!
You can see in the instructions that the ends of each seatbelt
is attached to the end of a lug ring at the rear of each seat,
then buckled over the back bar to keep them from flopping around
the aircraft in turbulance, etc.
While this set will really set off the detail in the CH-53E kit,
this detail set is not for the beginning modeler. You will need
to be able to remove the photo-etch parts from their frets (simple
once you know how) and then be able to apply these details using
cyano adhesives without gluing yourself to the kit parts. It isn't
difficult, or else these sets wouldn't be so popular.
You should be able to find this detail set at your local hobby
retailer or one of the many online hobby shops. Trust me, this
is worth looking for!
Recommended for experienced modelers!
My sincere thanks to Eduard for this review sample!
