Eduard 1/48 CH-53E Cargo Seatbelts First Look
By Michael Benolkin
| Date of Review | November 2006 | Manufacturer | Eduard |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | CH-53E Cargo Seatbelts | Scale | 1/48 |
| Kit Number | 49026 | Media | Photo-Etch |
| Pros | Fantastic detail update to the Academy Sea Stallion cockpit and cabin | Cons | |
| Skill Level | Intermediate | MSRP (USD) | $7.95 |
First Look
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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'tdifficult, 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!
My sincere thanks to Eduard for this review sample!