EDITORIAL

Dear Friends and Modellers,

I welcome you to today’s newsletter, one that will focus on September’s new releases and developments. The end of August saw

the sell out of the first boxing of

the Mustang kit, a total of 6700

kits with the title Chattanooga

Choo Choo, released as a Limited

Edition kit on the occasion of the

American IPMS National convention in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

The show itself was very nice, held

in a very nice town. The interest

in the Mustang was huge, both at

the show, and on the internet. We

sold a thousand kits in 24 hours,

which, at the moment, represents

a record for us in terms of a single

item sale, and the overall sales for

this kit are also the best to date for

a Limited Edition release of a kit.

Discussions around the Mustang

are continuing at a feverish pace,

and inevitably touch on the distant future to cover any possible

release of the P-51B/C as well as

a scaling down to 1:72nd scale.

This will all happen, but the timing

of these items cannot yet be nailed down with any precision. But

I can say with certainty when the

Royal Class boxing of the P-51 kit

will come out and what it will look

like. As usual, it will follow the Dual

Combo concept, and will contain

plastic for all the P-51D versions.

Contrary to our original plans, we

decided to exclude the photo reconnaissance F-6D, but to include

an extra plastic sprue for the Pacific theatre Very Long Range Mustang. This will allow the inclusion

of the oversized drop tanks that

were used in the PTO. A part of the

Royal Class boxing will be dedicated to the British Mustang Mk.IV.

All in all, this will be a very striking

item, and will be an ideal gift at

Christmas. Don’t forget to tell your

wives!

Before that, though, we will

be releasing the first ProfiPACK

P-51D-5, the early versions of the

Mustang without the future leading edge extension ahead of the

fin. This kit will be interesting if

only through the fact that it represents one of the few versions of

the Mustang not yet released by

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eduard

any manufacturer in 1:48th scale.

This is a bit of a perplexing notion,

given the multitude of very striking

markings options available for this

version. Six will be found in this

ProfiPACK kit, and if you are not familiar with these aircraft, you can

get acquainted with them in the

pages of this newsletter. The Mustang, and specifically this kit, will

also be interesting through it’s significant role that it will play in this

year’s E-day event, and is the reason why I am writing about it now.

We have named the event’s Friday

night portion in honour of one of

the Mustangs offered in the kit,

Luisiana Hot Wave. There will be

three seminars associated with it.

The first will be dedicated to a new

book called ‘Pod palbou hloubkaru‘, and it will be held by its author,

Filip Vojtasek. The book is about

attacks against ground targets by

American and British fighters in the

Czech lands through 1944-45, and

as such, covers a lot of Mustang

material. Given that, in both the

Chattanooga Choo Choo and the

D-5 ProfiPACK kits, there are a lot

of marking options for airplanes

flown or shot down over Czech territory, the subject matter is more

than relevant to the theme. The

second seminar will be conducted

by Mr. Petr Samal and Mr. Jiri Fiala,

and will focus on the point system

used in model assessment for the

Czech Republic National Championships. I think that within the

context of past, passionate debates, this will be an interesting conversation and I hope that there will

be enough time to talk about both

tiers of the show, assessing entries

in both the Masters and Hobby categories. The seminar portions on

that evening will be rounded out

by a talk with Mirek Sazavsky, the

pilot of the only flying Mustang in

the Czech Republic. Mirek will also

be active at the show on Saturday,

and will fly Excalibur over Milovice. It will be reminiscent of Radim

Vojta’s flight of the Spitfire last

year, but without the train. We will

go to Milovice by car, and we’ll all

have the opportunity to examine

the Mustang at the local airfield.

As I write this, it has not been definitely nailed down which of the

two local airfields will be the one

to host the P-51. This will be clarified through the upcoming week,

and the information will appear

on our Facebook page a couple of

days later. In any case, this will be

a noteworthy part of E-day and will

deserve the attention it gets. Back

to the Friday portion of the show.

Turning to the non-intellectual portion of plans, there is something

to say about refreshments. There

will be coffee, some beer, wieners,

nothing too extravagant, but certainly, culture is more easily absorbed into the system with some

beer and a full stomach, no? We

will also be selling at our table on

Friday, which will hopefully lead

to smaller lines on Saturday. The

reason is clear. The lineups at our

tables have traditionally been long

and time consuming. It won’t be

just because of the Mustang, but

that specific item will be available,

and will be diligently restocked as

necessary. We will also keep to

our past habit of having items that

are geared to the theme of Czech

and Czechoslovak aviation available at E-day. So, along those lines,

we have prepared a 1:72nd scale MiG-21MFN with special resin

and photoetched accessories that

cover specific equipment unique

INFO Eduard - September 2019