Editorial

Good evening, dear Friends,

 Welcome to this, our penultimate newsletter of this year. November is traditionally one of the busier months for us, and this one is shaping up to be the busiest month for the year, bar none. There will be a lot going on, although not all of our activity will be readily apparent at first glance. High visibility activities will undoubtedly include our participation in exhibitions and related events. Next weekend we will be at Telford for Scale Model Word. We only have a small square footage table setup at the show, but considering its size, it's also damn expensive. Our trip to Telford will be accompanied by a short, four-day Afterparty, sales events that we traditionally put on for people who can’t attend a specific event. We’ll be well stocked at Telford, bringing along not only the first Profipack of the 72nd scale P-51D-5 Mustang, but, as with E-day, we also have a theme-relevant item ready, a 48th scale Mustang Mk.III. Originally, it was supposed to be just a simple Limited Edition show piece in a white box, but in the end we decided that British Mustangs are worth more effort than that and promoted the item to a standard Profipack boxing. I have no doubt it will appeal to all fans of the RAF and British aviation in general, as will the Profipack DH-2 reissue.

 For an older item, the DH-2 is still holding up very well. The masters were made honestly, by hand, and the molds are galvanized metal. As I say, they’ve held up well, more than a quarter of a century after their creation. You might think that this kit would be a good candidate for our ‘Heavy Retro’ line, but due to its execution, cleanliness of work and type of form, this kit is still too ‘current standard’ to really belong in that category conceptually. True, in terms of current standard kits, the DH-2 hails from the beginnings of what we see as this type of product, but it is in a style of work that forms a direct line of development to today's modern kits. And it’s not just about the plastic. The boxart was also created by hand by Martin Novotny. Nevertheless, it has a lot in common with contemporary boxarts, as indicated by Honza Bobek's Box Art Story on the subject of the plot depicted in this painting.

 The last Saturday of November ends this year's show season in Bratislava, with the resurrected Plastic Winter event. We are curious to see how the exhibition and competition will look like at its new venue. I will be in Bratislava personally, and I promised to conduct a Slovak version of ‘the Pot’ Q and A session. If I understood the preliminary agreement with the organizers correctly, it will be a stand-up discussion. Plastic Winter coincides with the traditional date of the global Black Friday event, in which we also regularly participate. This year will be no different, which means that the Plastic Winter Afterparty and Black Friday will be one event, lasting in this case from Friday to Monday. This is not because we want to drag out Black Friday to some point of endlessness, as is the custom for many stores, but rather because there are some behind-the-scenes technical considerations that come into play with activating and ending such a sale. I recommend being alert with respect to this event, do not hesitate and do not postpone any purchases until Monday. You might not make it.

 In November we will also finish making the molds for the P-40E in1:48th and preparing the Royal Class boxing, which will be new for February, 2025. This means that whatever components are going into the kit must be ready by Christmas….in about seven weeks. As of today, we have all twelve color options selected and are working on the decals, tweaking the color schemes, instructions and accessory sets, especially those produced by the Brassin department. As of today, none of the six molds are ready, but we will change that quickly during November. All forms are at a high stage of development, every day more parts, plates and electrodes are added. We are conducting final milling, sparking, cleaning and assembling of the forms, doing some fine tuning and are getting ready to pop out the first test shots. You can follow the progress of the work on our Facebook and Instagram pages. Pre-orders of the Royal Class P-40E will start on our e-shop www.eduard.cz on November 15th and will last until November 26th. Test shots will be available for actual viewing for the first time in Bratislava on November 30th. As part of the pre-order offer, it will be possible to include accessory sets for the kit as well. Together with the base kit, a number of these will be made available. We are working on a printed cockpit, engine, landing gear struts, wheels and other sets.

 The pre-order method on our e-shop will not be your only chance to buy this kit, and it will be on sale at retailers from the end of January who order in time. As with previous Royal Class releases this year, we will only produce the total number of kits ordered from our pre-order e-shop and those pre-ordered by retailers. We then round the total number up to an even hundred, and produce that quantity. By definition, this will give us a few dozen kits left over at the end of January. We will then either sell them to one of the retailers, or we will sell them ourselves at model shows.

 We made the return to pre-orders after a few years, as well as to Royal Class boxings. It is our response to changing market conditions and also to repeated requests from modelers. I confess that I was against the idea for a long time and if it weren't for the complications in the market brought on by the Russian war, I would probably continue to be against it. However, the sales figures of this renewed series of kits show that it was the right reaction. It confirms the old truism that an extraordinary situation calls for extraordinary decisions. We've done quite a bit of that over the past two years, and I'm sure we're not done yet. By the way, a few weeks ago while sorting through old documents I came across a list of Avia B.534 subscribers. That list is eighteen years old now. I'd post a photo here, but I'm afraid that would be a GDPR violation. Don’t want that. This also shows where our world has moved to in those eighteen years and what a different one it is today. I'm not complaining, I'm perfectly happy with the progress made in those eighteen years and I'm not calling for a return to the old days in any way. Honestly, I wouldn’t change a thing. Social and age factors aside, at least technologically, we are in a completely different world today. From the perspective of 2006, we are in a science fiction world not easily imagined back then. The fact that we still haven't landed on Mars and Martians haven't landed here doesn't play a major role in this.

 We have another milestone coming up in November that has many people at Eduard working their butts off right now. We are about to publish the first issue of the paid subscription version of the Eduard newsletter we call the Modelers’ Den. It took us a long time, admittedly, but I think that most will easily agree that with us, good things come to those who wait. This endeavor will be similar, but not identical, to our classic newsletter. For example, it will contain only a minimum of information about Eduard releases, as it is not primarily intended as a vehicle to promote our own products, but will bring additional information in the form of historical articles, reports from modeling events and museums, interviews with interesting personalities and information coming from other companies. It won't be completely ad-free, we expect it to feature ads from other manufacturers, magazines and modeling events. In this sense, it will be a commercial product and will earn money to sustain itself through paid advertising. Another source of income is expected from paying readers. The price will be 120 CZK, which amounts to something like five bucks US, and there will be a little perk that comes with it. With your purchase, you will receive a discount coupon to be used for purchases through our e-shop, which can also be used in combination with other offers. Combined with a purchase of regular value from our e-shop, the purchase of the magazine is more than worth it. The first issue will be free so you can give a test drive with no obligation. However, I need to mention that at the moment, we are still dealing with one technical issue that could delay the release of the first issue of the Modelers’ Den by a month or, worst case, two. The issue stems from the fact that originally, the Den was not supposed to be a downloadable pdf, it was only supposed to be readable in the Triobo browser. However, based on discussions with modelers, we came to the conclusion that this would not be appropriate and decided to allow the download in pdf form for readers. It’s only a matter of time before we iron out the last remaining bugs.

Happy Modelling!

Vladimir Sulc