EDITORIAL

Friends,

The fact that it’s the New Year will likely

lead you to guess at what today’s newsletter will be about. So, let me get right

down to it with new tooled kits. In December, we introduced our Tempest Mk.V

in 1:48th scale in the first production series

version. This will be followed in February by

the most famous of versions of this fighter,

the 2nd production series, forever burned

into the memory of modelers thanks to Pierre Clostermman and his Big Show. Today, we

know that some of the stories are to some

extent tall tales, but, nevertheless, the book

has led many of us to modeling. Our model

will, of course, depict the aircraft as well,

and in two versions. The remainder of the

marking options will cover wartime as well

as post war use of the Tempest Mk.V, so lovers of natural metal airframes will find something of interest. The 2nd Series kit will

include some components that weren’t

in the 1st Series kit, such as a spinner with

diagonal blade openings for the manually

set prop pitch, two types of dust filters and

a small sprue with drop tanks. The Tempest

will make one more return this year, in June,

as a Royal Class boxing, with the main bonus

of that package being a publication by Chris

Thomas. This will also carry an option for

Clostermman, so if you can wait till June, that

might be your choice to consider.

The Royal Class edition of the Tempest Mk.V

will be preceded in May by a new 1:72nd scale Fokker D.VII. In principle, this will be a scaled down version of the 48th scale kit, but it

will be modified to the point where the older

and larger version will be mostly unidentifiable. As with our recent releases, we put quite a bit of effort into simplifying construction

of this kit, and I think that fans of this scale

will be satisfied along those lines as well. Nei-

ther I, nor any of my Eduard colleagues , have

had the opportunity to assemble the kit, as

we have no fuselages yet molded, but what

has been produced, especially in terms of the

small detail bits, I must say that I am filled

with quiet anticipation. Once you get this

new kit into your hands, I think that my quiet

anticipation will become justified, because

through its elegance and modeler friendly

design, it will be reminiscent of the good ‘ol

kits of First World War aircraft such as the

Albatros D.V., Fokker Dr.I and the Nieuport

17. The latter is a bit of a forgotten item, but

I consider it one of our best efforts and a role

model for what an ideal 72nd scale kit should

look like. The entire line of Fokker D.VIIs will

feature revised lozenge patterns which will

reflect the most recent research surrounding

this mysterious item. I must admit to a certain

amount of skepticism in this matter, because

we have had so many verifiably accurate Lozenge patterns that it’s virtually impossible to

get my bearings straight with respect to the

correct colours of these things and it’s clear

that further verifiably correct research is pending and in the end we will be no further than

square one. I am not trying to put the brakes

on research. Certainly not. Please….researches, continue to research! The line of D.VIIs

will open with the Fokker D.VII OAW, which

I consider to be the most striking of all these

aircraft. As with the 48th scale version of the

model, most of these 72nd scale kits, except

for the Austro-Hungarian MAG, will have two

versions of the fuselage and in the case of the

OAW, these will be the two last production

versions. There is a third version of the OAW

being planned as well, allowing the option of

building Ernst Udet’s famous red/white aircraft. As noted and to the contrary, the MAG

version will offer just the one fuselage type,

as there was just the one, but this kit will

offer the relevant differences in the radiator

and prop, including the popular four bladed

type. The MAG will come out in October, it

will be available at E-day, and it will also be

released as a Limited Edition kit similar to the

48th scale item. And so that there will be no

shortage of Fokkers, we will release a Quatro

Combo Royal Class package, likely in the first

couple of months of 2019. Through 2020, we

will release other versions of the Fokker D.VII

from other manufacturing plants, such as Albatros (aka Fokker D.VII (Alb)) and including

Fokker’s own, (aka Fokker D.VII (Fok)).

Over the course of the year, there will

be new releases of older subjects. The first

half of the year will see the coming of the

Fw 190A-8 and Bf 109G-10 Diana/WNF in

the ProfiPACK range and the Bf 109G-6/AS

and G-10 Erla (Serial Number 15xxxx) over

the latter half of the year. We have completed the fuselage for aircraft with serial numbers 48xxxx from Erla, but we still have not

decided weather to release both Erla G-10s

as separate entities or together but, at the

moment, it looks as though the ProfiPACK

kits will include both fuselages, one for each

production block, and the later Weekend kits

will be separated. The Erla G-10 was a relati-

Fokker Mag.

Fokker OAW.

4

eduard

INFO Eduard - January 2019