Eduard 1/32 P-51D Armament Detail Set First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

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 niceset of photo-etched details for the DML 1/32 P-51D Mustang.

This set consists of two frets of photo-etch parts, one of which has color printing on the surface to replicate the manufacturers' placards that were mounted inside the gun bay doors.

This set replaces the interior of the gun bays with photo-etch, providing some amazing structural detail through the use of laminated layers of parts. The gun bay doors are four layers of photo-etch thick (you do the bending and laminating of course). When you're done with the metal origami, you'll be amazed at the resulting look of those assemblies.

While this set will really set off the detail in DML's P-51D 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! With a little work, this set may be adaptable to the Hasegawa P-51D as well, but no guarantees!

My sincere thanks to Eduard for this review sample!