Editorial

Good evening, dear Friends,

We've had a hectic March. I understand that it might not seem that way to you, but every bar looks different from the dining room than it does from the kitchen. In order for the view from the dining room, in other words, from you, the customers, to be positive, the staff in the kitchen (us), has little choice but to be very busy. So, hectic is good. The goal of the kitchen staff is to have a dining room full of satisfied guests, and that is also the case with us. A proven method is to bring new ideas and new stimuli to the table. In our case, we also launched a mobile canteen, with which we went to one exhibition every week through March. We've never done that in the past. There was some doubt as to whether or not it was even manageable, and it turned out to be just that. So we set out for Verona, Bytom, Prosek and Prostejov, and all in all, the time and effort invested was well worth it, certainly at least for those of us who attended and prepared those exhibitions. Our customers liked it, they looked satisfied, no one complained, so we will continue with our event participation program. The rest of the year will be a little more subdued and in April, we are going to only one exhibition, in Moson. But I won't be there, I'm going to a wedding on the same date. Martina Kurakovais getting married, and she is a shareholder in Eduard, making her my business partner, and is also the chief technologist of our tool shop, the lady who is largely responsible for the appearance of our kits. She is marrying Mr. Ladislav Jonáš. This is the man who designed, among others, the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 and all the Spitfires that Eduard has produced. He is also responsible for the MiG-21s, including the upcoming MiG-21F. Now he's constructing another sweet little item, but I won't tell you what that is just yet. We will have plenty of time for that later.

In Prostějov, our exhibition and production activities were closely related. During March, we completed all the molds for the P-51B Mustang in 1:48th, we also completed other operations necessary for the release of kits, such as the design and start of production of decals, instructions, photoetched, masks and the basic Brassin sets. So right now we're ready to release the Mustang, and we've been hitting the market in March to see what customers think. And customers like it, which is very positive news after two years of no one ripping down walls to get at new kits. This is also new to our operations. At the beginning of March, pre-orders of the Royal Class P-51B took place with an unexpectedly good result, which saw us reach almost 4000 ordered items. This is significantly more than the usual sales of kits of this series released so far. It shows that the modellers' demand for the restoration of the Royal Class line has a solid foundation and that I was wrong to underestimate the call. We then took a hundred boxes of this tasty little Mustang morcel in white boxes to Prostejov, where we sold them all, plus 54 Overtrees. In Moson, similar activities will be repeated, because the new releases for May will be on sale there, and they will again be mainly about the Mustang!

April Releases

 In April, we are releasing another Gustav, a Limited Edition kit dedicated to the late versions of the Bf 109 G-6 and Bf 109 G-14. I understand that the 72nd scale kits are perhaps getting a little old for some people who see them as nothing special, but I'd say that the opposite is, in fact, true. The version of the Bf 109 G, which the kit is dedicated to, has not been taken seriously by anyone yet, really. There are some G-14 kits out there, but they are quite old, and the late G-6 versions, the Erla canopy and tall rudder machines, or a combination of the two, have been more or less avoided by most serious manufacturers. However, we will not be accused of dropping the ball on these aircraft. If we're going to make these Messerschmitts, we're going to make them properly. As well as the Wildcat, one more of which, the late version F4F-4, we are releasing in Profipack form (1/48th) also in April, along with the Fokker E.III in the Weekend line, and again, in 1:48th. Plus a lot of photoetched, masks, Brassins and other accessories, as you will see as you scroll down the pages of this month’s newsletter.

Hyperscale

 As promised, I started a discussion on Hyperscale. The beginning was quite a rush, and I admit that I found it difficult to keep up, but now things have simmered down a bit. I'd say we get along with the modelers rather nicely, I've only had two minor misunderstandings so far, and that's better than it was in my early days other forums. The only snag is one thread where we are dealing with how the wing should look on the Mustang. It's about whether it should be completely smooth or whether it can have panel lines like we have. This is a vast topic that would be worth an in-depth article. So I have quite a lot of background for this, to tell the truth, I have been dealing with the topic for almost ten years. I have hundreds, maybe thousands, of photos reviewed, lots of articles and other sources, 48 Mustangs that we went over in great detail and one flight in a Mustang in the back seat. I admit that at the time, I didn't really look at how this particular machine’s wing surface was treated, because when I climbed into it, my main concern was to shove my 190 cm and 120 kilos frame into that slot behind the pilot's seat, and when I was climbing out of the cockpit after the flight, I really couldn’t see straight for a while and it was all I could do to stand on my feet. You can see from this that the priorities of historical research can be different at different times, and it was kind of the same with that wing surface on the Mustang. I'd say in general it was that they polished the wing first on most units and then they dropped the practice in general because they had other things to worry about, plus they found out that if you hang additional tanks under the wing, you can polish to your heart’s content, but it won't fly any faster anyway. You can do the same for your models. If you don't like our panel lines, putty, sand, polish and spray paint them. This will make your building experience all the more authentic because you will be working just like the workers and technicians on the North American production line. If you note that we have panel lines on the wing of our releases, then our Mustang is actually no different from other kits already released, and I recommend that you take a good look at the kit first and do not make hasty judgments, because I am sure that there are some very fundamental differences between ours and theirs. It's just something completely different than what you get from anyone else. I admit that I had the urge to write an article on the subject of Mustang wings, but I have already promised our editor-in-chief so much that I don't know when I will deliver all that I have already committed to. So I will stick to my original plans and not jump to other topics. We're not going to make any changes to our Mustang wing now, and we couldn’t even if we wanted to, and we don’t, because we are confident that our interpretation is the best, given available references.

Articles

 That brings me to today's articles. We have another installment of the Air War over Ukraine series by Mira Barič. The author confided in us that he receives various hateful and aggressive letters. It is clear that they are not from supporters of Ukraine. We are supporters of Ukraine and we stand behind our author. At the same time, we also express our sincere regret for the victims of the terrorist attack on the Moscow concert hall and express our sincere condolences to the survivors and the victims of this barbaric act. At the same time, however, we also think that if the Russian security forces can arrest a person on the street with a banner or a quote from the constitution in a matter of minutes, they should also be able to take action against terrorists in less than an hour. Here in the decadent West, our security forces can do that. On the other hand, quoting the Constitution or protesting against the government are fundamental rights for us.

We also have two historical articles in this issue of our newsletter. The Danube article by Peter Kaššák is about mine laying in the Danube in 1944, the other by Jan Bobek is about the downing of Erich Hartmann and one of his Bf 109s. In addition, we have three shorter but engaging Boxart stories, about the Wildcat, the Hellcat and about the Fokker E.III. And I wrote a travelogue about a research trip to Italy in which I participated as the main driver and expedition leader, Jakub Nademlejnský as the coordinator and Stan Archman as the main researcher. In this way, I think we achieved par with the recognized standard makeup of various expeditions of other institutions, whether sporting or academic.

And that is it from me today.

Happy Modelling!

Vladimir Sulc