EDITORIAL
Dear Friends,
It is not necessary to point out what has
befallen us as a whole over the past several weeks. The quarantine is here, and it
will be with us for a long while. All of the
unpleasantries and inconveniences are
leaping out at all of us from every corner,
and to get into minute details seems, to
me, to be unnecessary. We have already
not been able to meet at Prosek, and we
are not likely to see each other in the near
future, either. In all likelihood, not just all
of the spring events will be cancelled, but
all the summer ones as well. It should
probably be expected that the permission to gather in larger numbers will be
limited long after the actual conditions
begin to improve, and we will be happy to
get E-day in on the scheduled dates. We
can think to ourselves that the date isn’t
‚until‘ September, but we should probably be thinking more along the lines of it’s
‚already‘ in September. It’s gonna come
up fast. We can only hope that Lady Luck
will smile down upon us. For now, we will
go on the assumption that she will, and E-day will go as planned in both conference
halls.
At Eduard, we continue to work, produce, sell, and prepare new items for May
release. Of course, we are doing all this
in compliance with required restrictions
imposed on all of us, as well as the risks
involved in not doing so are high. Many
of us are working from home, and those
of us that go to work in the morning, go
straight home in the afternoon, and get
up and do it over again the following morning. Just like you guys. We’re all in the
same boat.
In an effort to preserve at least some social aspect within the modelling community, to whatever extent we can, we have
prepared a virtual event, the 1st Quarantine Bunny Cup. It is an attempt to do something under the conditions imposed
on a world in isolation. It appears, that
something good may have been created.
We have registered 410 modellers from
forty countries with some 1139 models.
We have an associated event that goes
with it, and voting is currently open. The
second most represented country is Italy
with 121 models, behind the Czechs’ 420.
Forza Italia! The voting system is simply
based on the number of ‚Likes‘ (which
I personally like, no pun intended), and the
winners will be the ones with the greatest
number of likes. If you still have not seen
this ‚contest‘, there’s still time to do so
4
eduard
on our Facebook page, at https://www.
facebook.com/EduardCompany. It’s
certainly worth the look, there are some
nice pieces there! The aforementioned
accompanying event involves a presentation of prepared models and a discussion
around them, where we answer your
questions concerning them. Given the current situation, we have been showing off
even things that we would normally save
for the end of the year. That, in an effort
to keep up some optimism and good vibes over the future of the hobby.
We also have our usual Afterparty in full
swing, as we do with all of our events in
which we take part. Sending off orders,
with a few exceptions, is working normally. In some countries, though, certain
limitations have been implemented, and
generally speaking, everyone is subjected
to situations and conditions that change
on a daily basis, if not hourly. For that reason, you should monitor the delivery situation at www.eduard.cz if this concerns
you. As far as postal rates are concerned,
we are keeping to the normal rates that
we have in place, despite the fact that the
rates are increasing at a relatively brisk
rate consistent with the current situation
and the effect it has on the postal system.
We intend to maintain these current rates as long as possible, and we think we
can til things get back to normal. We think
that even the rates will settle back down,
too. And please, don’t get peeved at us
for the postal rates in any case. They are
not the product of our imaginations. After
a deal with Post Optimal, we have again
resumed sending packages to Italy through this courier. However, please bear in
mind that Post Optimal is the only way to
get things through to Italy, as is the case
with Russia, too, and this could so suffer
somewhat of a backlog.
Within the Afterparty, new releases for
April are included, and so are likely familiar to pretty much everyone by now. Nevertheless, we are formally introducing
them here.
On the heels of the MiG-21PFM that
was released in January, we have the MiG-21PF in a 1:72nd scale ProfiPACK format.
This can be considered a sister kit to the
MiG-21PFM, and is naturally comparable in concept. It features a new tree with
fuselage and wings, and different detail
parts are used during construction compared to the PFM version. There are the
usual five marking options, and of course, masks and photoetching are included.
From the point of view of assembly, it
amounts to a pretty typical ProfiPACK kit,
but in my opinion, this kit represents the
current extent of our abilities.
When I was a kid of some twelve or thirteen years, in the seventies, I came across
the book ‚Ace of the Iron Cross‘ at the local Most library. I read it inside of two afternoons, and it really left its mark on me.
Up to that time, I knew very little about
the First World War, and all I had were
some Biggles books to go by. Those were
also from the Most Public Library, and the
fact that these were actually available
there was a bit of a small miracle, as these
really didn’t support the Socialist regime’s
idea of what a kid should be borrowing
from the local library. The same goes for
the Udet book. In any case, both these
publications brought me to a brink of
a dilemma. What was, then, the ‚right‘
side, fighting for the ‚right‘ things, the preservation of civilization and for the good
of humanity in general? The Germans
were the bad guys, and that’s what we
were told in school, and to some extent,
in the Biggles series. This was a question
that gave me some restless nights, and
I was lifted out of this by Remarque, which
they had at the library as well, and the collection was complete to boot. Udet became my hero, and I categorised him as a
cool, level headed badass, along the lines
of my other childhood heroes that included the likes of Old Shatterhand to D’Artagnan to Pavel Korchagin, who was the
hero of a Nikolai Ostrovsky novel, in case
you weren’t aware. That also brought on
a big dilemma, but that would be another
INFO Eduard - April 2020