Eduard Brassin 1/48 R-2800-10 Engine for the F6F Hellcat First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Eduard Brassin 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 nice enhancement to their own 1/48 F6F Hellcat releases. If you saw (or own) the F6F Royal Class kit, this special edition had the R-2800-10 engine, but was still designed as a cowling-closed build. The rest of the Hellcat releases were provided without the resin engine. This detail set provides a much more detailed R-2600 engine with a separate crank case, individual cylinder heads, as well as the photo-etched ignition harness. In addition, this set is designed to be displayed with the cowling removed, so this engine also includes an exhaust collector ring, directed exhaust stacks, separate cowling panels, and instructions for removing the corresponding sections out of the kit cowling and adding the included photo-etched frame for the Dzus fasteners. This is quite an impressive addition for an already impressive Hellcat kit!

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 Brassin for this review sample!