Editorial

Dear Friends,

In February, after overcoming many obstacles, we finally successfully completed two large and exceptional projects, the Alien and Strafer kits. The first one in particular put up a good fight, but clean livin’ prevailed! Those of you who followed the preparation of this project on our Facebook or Instagram pages know what I'm talking about. I dare say that we have probably never created anything more complex, at least when it comes to decal sheets. We are therefore happy that we were able to send out all preordered kits to customers by the end of February. It was a little later than ideal in the end, and I thank all those who preordered for their patience and understanding for all the big and small difficulties we encountered with this project. I believe that all of this was a fair price to pay for owning such a unique kit. By the way, we ended up producing a total of 950 Tigers 3366, which is an extremely small edition by our standards. Thanks to this small number of pieces produced, it is clear that everyone who invested in this kit received a truly unique item. Of the 950 kits, we sold 720 via preorders, and the rest were delivered to retailers. So if you hesitated in oreordering, you still have a small and very limited chance to purchase this kit, but be aware that these kits are available to retailers in very small numbers as well.

In principle, the situation is similar with the Strafer kit, the B-25J Mitchell in 1:48th from the new HKM EDUARD series. We also sold these kits through preorders, but unlike Tiger 3366, aka Alien, in this case the total number of kits is significantly higher. We produced a total of 3800 pieces, most of which are at retailers. Strafer is one of the March Limited Edition releases, so at this point it is already available at most retailers who ordered it, but it is no longer available in our e-shop. This is because we produced the exact number of pieces that we received preorders from our e-shop and from retailers for.

We will proceed in the same way with several other new products prepared for this year. The closest of them to reality is the Royal Class P-40K 1:48. Preorders for this kit will start next week, on Friday, March 13th, and will end on Tuesday, March 24th. The kit is officially a May release, and we will ship it to customers and dealers in the second half of April.

A month later, on Friday, April 10th, preorders for the second HKM EDUARD kit, the A-20G Havoc in 1:48, will begin. Preorders on this item end on April 21st, shipping to online customers will begin in the first half of August.

New Releases for March

Going back for a moment to the current flock of March new releases, we have the Enstrom 480 in the Hybrid line in 1:72nd scale. This kit follows on from the kit that modelers who exhibited at E-Day received in October 2025. Since it is a HYBRID series kit, it consists of plastic and 3D printed parts. Compared to the kit from E-Day, with catalog number 972011, this March new release has structurally modified 3D printed parts so that they are more durable both during transportation and during model building. This simply means that both the parts themselves and their attachment to the base are reinforced. There have also been changes to the printing support system and their shape to allow easier separation of parts from the support structure. The new kit with catalog number 972012 also has a classic box with a boxart image, unlike the exhibition one, and offers a choice of six color and marking versions.

Another kit in the March collection of new items is the Messerschmitt Bf 109 K-4, released for the first time as a 1:72nd scale Limited Edition kit under the name Kurfürst. Like most new Limited Edition kits, the Kurfürst is released as a Dual Combo affair with two sets of plastic and a decal sheet with nine color and marking options. The Bf 109K-4 is also the last part of the Bf-109F/G/K project. With the Kurfürst, we have fulfilled our expectations as far as the Messerschmitt Bf 109 with the DB 605 engine is concerned, although we will of course release other boxed versions in all series, Weekend, Profipack and Limited Editions.

In March, we are also putting out two reissues of older kits. While one of the most popular kits of recent times, the Fw 190F-8 (Profipack 1:48), is being released unchanged from its original guise, the Spitfire F Mk.IX (also Profipack 1:48) is different. In its case, we have decided to revamp the markings options. We have removed one of the original paint schemes and have added two new ones, one Canadian and one American.

You can also find some reissues among aftermarket accessories, specifically among photoetched items. There are seven reissued sets in total and are practically identical to their original versions, and I must warn you that we expect them not to remain in production and on offer for too long. I therefore recommend that you do not hesitate in ordering them if you are among those that have been missing them.

Events

In March, we will attend several exhibitions and other modeling events. We will not go to Verona this year, but we will not miss the exhibition in Bytom next weekend. Jan Zdiarský and Standa Archman will be in Bytom, and they will be selling our products there. On that same date, I myself will be at a meeting of model-makers at the Technical Museum in Brno, where the World of Plastic Modeling exhibition is coming to an end. I will have a presentation there on the topic of the upcoming P-51B Mustang kit in 1:32nd scale. To be honest, we do not have much of the Mustang finished yet, so the presentation will mainly be about renders of 3D printed parts, I may also have samples of prints with me. But even so, visitors will not be bored. My presentation will also include projects for kits we will release from Revell and other companies’ plastic, which we agreed on at the Nuremberg Fair. These are attractive kits and some quite surprising projects, so I believe that the participants will enjoy this lecture, if not only because they will be the first to hear about these news.

The next exhibition with our participation will be Glue Glory in Deringer, Switzerland. Jakub Nademlejnsky and I will be there again, we will not be selling, we will be giving lectures and the program will be similar to the one in Brno, only it will be in English. We will conclude the March exhibition activities in Prosek, at the Panthers Cup, where we will both sell our products and give lectures. So those who will not be in Brno will hear the news at Prosek. However, it will only be surprising if the participants of the Brno event keep silent and not act as spoilers. That is unlikely, but stranger things have happened!

We will also be in Prostějov for a week. But that’s getting into April, so more about that next time. I will also mention the articles in today's edition of our monthly newsletter. You will find the ongoing, already 48th installment of the Air War over Ukraine, an article about the Enstrom 480 helicopter by Jaroslav Spacek. This is an article directly from the source, so don't miss it. Petr Uzsak writes about the Algerian Air Force, then we have the Model & Story column, one of the features carried over from the EMD, and in it the P-51D-5 Mustang model by Jan Baranec and the story of ‘Miss Steve’ airplane her pilot, William J. Cullerton. I wrote that article myself. Then there are two Box Art stories by Jan Bobek, about the B-25J for the Strafer kit and about the Bf 109 K-4 for the Kurfürst kit. The third Box Art story is about the Enstrom 480 and was written by Martin Janďourek. The closing words were written in the Tail End Charlie section by our colleague Jan Bobek. And that's all from me today.

Happy Modeling!

Vladimir Sulc