Eduard 1/48 F-16 Early Wheel 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.

Many AMS modelers will collect the relevant Eduard photo-etch sets for a given project, but they'll also go out and gather specific resin enhancements as well. Eduard has stepped up with a new product line to complement their photo-etched detail series - Brassin.

Brassin is a play on words with Brass and Resin, and in many sets in this series, the resin details also include a set of color photo-etch as well.

In this release, Eduard has provided a replacement set of resin wheels with nice brake details for the Kinetic 1/48 F-16A/B and early-block F-16C/D kits. This set comes with both main wheels, nose wheel, and a nice set of wheel chocks to keep your Viper safely parked. To help make the job of painting easier, this set also includes a set of yellow paint masks for these wheels.

You'll note that the late-block (Block 40/42/50/52) Viper wheels differed from the earlier F-16A/B/C/D variants with heavier duty wheels and wider tires to deal with the higher gross weight.

This set will enhance the landing gear details of Kinetic kits and provide a level of detail that is difficult to achieve by hand-painting. This should look good on the Tamiya and Hasegawa kits as well (with a little adaptation).

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!