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

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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