Let Let Let – Warplanes

The newest kit in Eduard’s 1/48 scale weekend edition is the beautiful Fw-190A-5 kit no 8430 released during the March 2008. Kit is presented in a beautiful box with simple but effective illustration of 5/JG 54 aircraft from the Eastern front in summer 1943. But it is when you open the box when a great surprise comes, six trees molded in beautiful olive plastic and one tree with extra clear transparent parts. The twelve pages assembly instructions do a good job making sense of this detailed kit. This is probably the most detailed Fw-190 kit I have seen so far. Surface detail is beautiful, with subtle panel line and rivet detail. Eduard’s moldings are outstanding quality and no sink marks or pin marks are visible. A great majority of almost 150 parts goes on detailing beautiful BMW 801 with both banks of cylinders highly detailed and complete with the cooling fan and rear accessory packs. A special template is provided to assist the modeler to install properly each of the eight engine stacks that exit along the sides of the fuselage. The top and sides of the cowling are separately molded so you can pose the panels open, removed, or buttoned up but unfortunately without the structure on cowlings. If you choose to keep the cowlings closed then you shouldn’t spend too much time detailing the engine. Gun bay at the nose is fully detailed complete with detailed machine guns and ammunition canisters, and the gun hood can be positioned. Wing roots weaponry is also detailed with gun bays and they can be optionally in open or closed position. Armament options include: centerline external fuel tank, centerline bomb and underwing W.Gr.21 rockets and separate launch tubes The main wheel well is state of the art it self, I haven’t seen such a detailed wheel well in styrene so far. As a confirmation that the Eduard has thought on everything the main gear struts are molded to get the right 8 degree angle offset of the main wheels to the strut and for getting the struts positioned properly on the wings. The idea is ingenious and it works! Tail wheel is given in two different styles, and so is the main wheel. The ailerons and rudder are separately molded and positionable, but the elevators are molded in place. The landing flaps are also molded up, but there are some details molded into the inside of the flap wells in the upper wing halves and cut lines are molded into the lower wing to make flap removal simple. Cockpit is fully detailed and besides standard plastic, provided on a decal for both side consoles as well as for instrument panel.

Eduard has provided decals for one of the most interesting German aces of the WWII. Emil “Bully” Lang was one of the most respected Luftwaffe Aces during WW II. He was credited with 173 aerial victories (144 on the Eastern Front, 29 on the Western Front) in over 400 sorties, before his death in combat over Belgium. A professional Lufthansa pilot in civilian life, Emil Lang joined the Luftwaffe as a cargo pilot in 1942. He wasn’t admitted to fighter school until 1943, overcoming considerable skepticism on account of his advanced age (34 years old, probably the oldest fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe). He was assigned to JG 54 and immediately involved in heavy fighting’s on the Eastern Front.. Lang’s first kills came in March, and within a month he was transferred to 5./JG 54 of which he became Staffelkapitän. On 3 November 1943 Lang recorded 18 kills in a single day against Soviet aircraft (an all-time record). Of the 29 victories claimed against the Western Allies, all but one occurred over the Normandy Invasion Front, making him the highest scoring German Ace of the Campaign.

Camouflage consists of standard RLM70/RLM71 on upper surfaces with RLM79 stripes over sprayed and RLM76 undersurfaces. Camouflage is well printed on the box as well as on the instruction sheet. JG 54 had some amazing cammo’s and this one is by my opinion one of the most interesting, way to go Eduard! Eduard decals are top quality, thin and sharp so you really don’t need to worry about their realistic appearance on the kit. There is no need for using any decal solutions but, I’ve used them anyway.
My assembly went smooth, I had no problems fitting the parts, except some small gap at wing roots but nothing else. Weekend edition kit 8430 was not at all easy to build considering the amount of details it provides but with much care every modeler can build it. This model looks great and it is outstanding addition on every modeler’s shelf.

This kit is highly recommended!

Darko Mladenovic

Sample kit is provided by jana Sulcova from Eduard

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