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Editorial


Good day, Dear Friends,

After a three-year break, we made a return to Telford, and it was a triumphant return at that! After all, Britain is the cradle of our business, and the Telford event is the biggest exhibition in our field and it would be a mistake to miss it. Our plan is to continue attending such events, beginning with Nuremberg in January/February. I firmly hope that this year we will meet more colleagues from other companies and more business people and journalists there than last year. I'll admit I'm a little nervous. Through the level of participation of companies at Nuremberg, how much the world is returning to normal can be gauged, and we would all be grateful for indications that it really is doing just that.

 In January, just prior to Nuremberg, we’ll be in Hradec Králové, attending their event there. In the spring, we will continue our exhibition activities in Prosek in Prague, we will probably also be in Italy in Verona and in Poland in Bydgoszcz. In April we will attend the traditional show in Mosonmagyarovár, followed by Zagreb in May, and I would like to go on a survey of Saumur. There will be another Iron Bunny contest in Bublava in June, which is a unique invitational event for selected participants, but our involvement in it is significant. Then, in the summer, we’re in Wisconsin for the IPMS USA Nationals. That will be followed by E-day, Eindhoven, Nitra and Telford. That’s it. I miss anything??

 At every one of this year's exhibitions, I was very pleased with the response that our magazine received from modelers. I take it as the result of our efforts to transform our monthly publication from a comprehensive advertising leaflet into an online modeling magazine that not only informs, but also entertains. For a year now, we have been preparing for the next step, which will be adding a paid supplement to the Info Eduard magazine. Don't be afraid of that idea. I promise, it won’t be a waste of your money, and not just because it will be a well thought out magazine. It will be a paid for item for several reasons. Our current magazine, as you know it, including historical and technical articles, will remain in its current form. An optional addition will be made available. The plan is that it will consist of an editorial, which I will probably still write myself, but I won't go into too much detail in it regarding our own items, and it will feature an interview with one of the personalities connected to our field and fields related to it, such as military or civil aviation. The main content will usually be three historical and technical articles, and several other sections, that are not specifically geared to our products. It will be news concerning model making; what new people have made or are preparing to make, especially in terms of kits, but there may also be information about new books, films, and we are preparing a section covering flight simulators, as well as news from aviation in general and museums, and of course, build articles. But these will by no means be limited to our kits. They will cover interesting and well-built models from various exhibitions, regardless of the manufacturer of the source kit or the accessories used in their completion. In order to put all of this together into a functioning entity, we had to find collaborators who demand payment for their work. We currently pay external contributors, but the majority of the articles are from us, the editorial board members. We write them in our spare time, apart from our regular work duties, and we don't get paid extra for it, and we believe that our efforts will be reflected in the sales of our products. It will be different in the optional addition, where the content of each issue will be a rather more expensive matter. Our own advertising content will also be very limited in the attachment, remaining more a part of the classic free Info Eduard magazine. All in all, the magazine supplement will be a costly affair to put together which we will not be able to afford to fully subsidize, so we will be selling it.

 So, how can I claim that paying for the supplement to our monthly magazine won’t be a waste of your money? At the moment I don't know exactly how much it will cost, but we will be in the range of $10US. For this, in addition to the attachment, you will also receive a discount coupon for purchases in the Eduard e-shop. The coupon will be a one-time purchase, but it will give you a total return on your investment in the magazine when you buy it, and you'll still have fun doing it. You and we should both profit from it. You will be able to try it out in March.

 Now you might be wondering what will happen to the printed magazine. The answer is that there will be no printed Info Eduard, at least for the foreseeable future. We have come to the conclusion that it is beyond our capabilities for the time being. I'm not saying it will never be, but not right now, while we are focused on finishing the above described attachment.

 

New Items for December

 Quite a while back, I decided to slightly change the format of my editorial and limit the list of current news that I point out month after month. I can't shake the feeling that I'm doing unnecessary work, duplicating what everyone finds in the issue, and annoying a lot of people. I finally reached a decision. So I'll limit myself to the most important or significant items only. If you didn't like it, get in touch. I would love to hear from you.

 The most important piece to come out of December is the 48th scale Profipack FM-1 Wildcat. You might say it's just another Wildcat, but I find the kit very interesting and important for several reasons. One of the reasons is that the FM-1 is not quite a mainstream type. It's actually a bit of an outsider, at least in terms of public interest and knowledge. I dare say that many people don't even know of its existence. It is not an aircraft that has seen famous battles like its cousins, the F4F-3 and F4F-4 Wildcats, or the Corsair and Hellcat, not to mention the Mustang, Spitfire and Bf 109. It was a work horse that toiled, faced the task at hand head on, fought and then went on to become practically a footnote. It flew and fought on fronts that are largely overlooked, even underappreciated, and generated stories that are known only to a small group of historians. Nevertheless, these fronts were very important, absolutely essential for winning the war. It was the home front where the FM-1 had the role of trainer, training hundreds and possibly thousands of naval aviators, and then the Battle of the Atlantic where the FM-1s did the hard and dangerous work of protecting Atlantic convoys, in long and bloody battles with German submarines for supremacy of the Atlantic. Task forces, built from destroyers and escort carriers, from which mixed (composite) squadrons of FM-1s, and later FM-2s, Avengers and Wildcats operated, played an absolutely vital role in the Battle of the Atlantic. In 1944, FM-1s were still involved in the invasion of Normandy and southern France as British Wildcat Mk.Vs, and eventually, a good number of them survived to this day, despite not being able to compete with their younger and more powerful FM-2 descendants in this regard.

 The FM-1 is not exactly a world-famous aircraft, but it is an important aircraft. And I like that, and I'm sure I'm not the only modeler who finds its perceived mediocrity appealing. The color schemes in the FM-1 kit are also attractive. There are six of them and their composition is incredibly varied for a WWII seaplane. Four selections are American, each with a different camouflage scheme. Among them is also the subject of the kit’s box art, an aircraft that took part in the second combat mission of VC-1 from the deck of the escort carrier USS Block Island, during which the patrolling Avenger, accompanied by this Wildcat, located and attacked two German submarines. You will be able to learn that they were not just any submarines from my article that I am preparing for the January issue of the Info Eduard. And the USS Block Island was not just any aircraft carrier either; among other things, it was the only American aircraft carrier sunk during World War II in the Atlantic. And the submarine that sunk it was not an ordinary submarine. In short, the story of this ship is rich, you will see for yourself! Another of our featured machines, the September 1943 Wildcat from the aircraft carrier USS Nassau, with its red outlined insignia and yellow tactical markings, represents perhaps the most colorful mid-war subject that US naval aircraft have to offer. In addition to the American Wildcats, the scheme selection includes two Royal Navy Mk.V Martlets, one from the Normandy invasion, the other from the invasion of southern France. However, by then, Martlet Mk.Vs were already called Wildcat Mk.Vs, and if you're wondering why, refer to Tom Cleaver's FM-1 article in today's magazine.

 Among other December kits, there are some big resurgences. The last 850 48th scale Profipack Bf 110 G-4s, Catalog Number 8208, are going on sale. This is one of the new products for January, 2021, which went on sale in December, 2020. It was on sale for four days when our infamous fire broke out, which destroyed all the moldings, which we had in stock at the time, something around a million sprues in all. Fortunately, it didn't destroy the boxed kits and kit packaging components, so 2200 boxed units were sold, leaving us with components for the 850 kits we boxed last month that are going on sale right now, almost exactly three years after the fire. This is a great opportunity to get an attractive kit, take advantage of it! Those kits won't be available too long!

 Among the reissues, we have the 1:48th scale Bell X-1 in the Profipack line. This kit was created in the late 1990s, at the height of our short runs, back when we didn't make our own molds or press the plastic ourselves. Mr. Pavel Vandělík made the molds for us and also produced the plastic sprues. Cooperation with him, or more precisely, his family, moved us forward in leaps and bounds qualitatively. Our kits, even if they were still short run injected into epoxy molds, started to take on a world standard, and we began to believe in ourselves and dared to do venture on to bigger and more interesting projects than those First World War biplanes. We launched into the Tempest and Yak 3 and enjoyed the kind of morning glory that easily gets to one's head. At that time, we went to Chicago every fall for the RICHTA show, which was presented in the States as the American equivalent to the Nuremberg show. That was typical American confidence, and RICHTA was much smaller, but I loved driving there and always enjoyed it. And on one of these trips, I think in 1996, but maybe it was a year earlier, I met Chuck Yeager. If you want to envy me, you don't have to. I was young and stupid then and didn't enjoy it as much as I was supposed to. There were a lot of war pilots still alive at that time, and it felt like a normal meeting with an old pilot. Well, as I say, I was a young fool. Today I would enjoy it in a completely different way. But on that note, various people began planting the bug in my ear that we should do a Bell X-1 because the 50th anniversary of Chuck's record breaking flight was coming up and an anniversary model of the Bell X-1 would be an absolute and spectacular blockbuster. It made sense, especially in America. But the one who nurtured that idea in me the most was a Frenchman, the editor-in-chief of Replic magazine, Christian Ginisty. He was very suggestive, as the French are. By the way, he drove a Ferrari, he must have been doing well as editor-in-chief! In the end it seemed like a good idea and we made the Bell X-1. The master was created by Zdeněk Sekyrka and Jindra Balon, the molds by Pavel Vandělík, the picture on one box was painted by Standa Tarasovič, the other by Martin Novotný, who was just starting out at the time. We were already producing Profipack kits as well as the then still nameless regular line, which later evolved into the Weekend label. The kit had some flaws, not everything fit as it should. We were learning and only had a vague idea of just how far we still needed to go. And incidentally, the flaws in the kit are still there, but at this point, I think a little lenience might be in order. Today, they carry a certain historical significance!

 Although the kit was a nice little item, quite top-notch for the time and for what Czech conditions allowed, it all had one flaw. No one much cared. No one was cheered when it was released and no one lost any sleep over it. The fiftieth anniversary of the first supersonic flight just sorta came and went, and as we were still learning about marketing at the time, modelers weren’t purchasing our X-1 much. Not that it was an outright flop, but let's just say that our Bell X-1 fell short of expectations. Over time, however, the disappointment passed, we sold out the entire production run after a few years, and since we always had new ideas and thus things to do, I only have the fondest of memories about it. We then released it several more times, and in the end it always sold quite briskly. I like this kit; it has a story and I like stories!

 Coincidentally, we have one more reissue of an older kit in the December listing, the 72nd scale Albatros D.V. It may surprise you, but this is a developmentally younger kit by a generation, with galvanized molds. Galvanized molds - that's also an interesting story, but for another time.

 We have plans to re-release several of these oldies but goodies next year. We will be creating the EDUARD HEAVY RETRO line for this purpose. We will release several kits in it that have some significance for the history of kit manufacturing at Eduard. Of course, we believe that they will also be attractive to customers and that they will not be like the first edition of the Bell X-1. The first item in the Heavy Retro range will be a 1:48th scale Savoia-Marchetti SM.79 Sparviero in February, commemorating our collaboration with then MPM, now Special Hobby and Jules Bringuier, owner of Classic Airframes. Plastic from these old molds is not a piece of cake, it's really a bit of molding archaeology, but our colleagues at Special Hobby are up to the task. The next kit will be the 48th Ki-115 Tsurugi, which is our first project, created in 3D modeling and milled on CNC machines. We want to prepare the 72nd scale L-410 Turbolet for E-day and the 48th Lysander for November, with which we will remember our cooperation with Gavia. If these kits are successful, we may continue with them from time to time and occasionally reminisce about a piece of kit manufacturing history.

 Let me make two comments about December’s new releases. The first is that almost all of the  Brassin accessory items, for the first time ever, are almost exclusively for our own kits, with a nice collection of FM-1 Wildcat sets among them. Check them out!

 I would also like to mention the two decal sets. Both are F-35 decals for the Tamiya kit, one for the 1:48th scale kit, the other for 72nd. And, as you might expect, these are our decals, the ones still hated and rejected by some modelers, enthusiastically accepted by many others. Lately, the justification for rejecting our decals has been centered around the alleged need to remove the carrier from them when applied. It is surprising how many modelers mention this feature as a negative, even though we ourselves do not state or recommend such a thing. On the contrary, we actually present them as traditional decals, and the carrier does not need to be removed from them. Just treat them like any other decal, apply them to a glossy surface and paint them with clear varnish after drying. The carrier then becomes invisible on the surface. By the way, the fact that the varnish has irregular edges and has a relatively wide overlap around the color motif of the decal has a significant effect on the fact that after varnishing, the edge of the varnish on the surface of the model is practically unrecognizable. And it doesn't even need a thick coating of clear. So please, people: you don't actually need to remove the carrier after applying the decals, and the wider offset doesn't matter; it can't be seen on the finished model!

 

Articles

 Today we have our regular update on air operations over Ukraine by Miro Barič and the second part of Working with PE by Jakub Nademlejnský. From history, we have today an incredibly relevant article on the history of the FM-1 WIldcat by Tom Cleaver and two articles dedicated to Czechoslovak airmen of the 311th Bomber Squadron RAF, honored on October 28 of this year by President Petr Pavel. Jan Zdiarský writes about Mr. Jiří P. Kafka, the last surviving member of 311th Squadron, and Pavel Vančata and Pavel Türk write about Mr. Oldřich Doležal. Yoav Efrati contributes an article about the coloring of Israeli S-199s. This was originally supposed to be a Box Art story for the December release of the S-199, but Yoav didn't fit the format, so his text is a standard article. Richard Plos wrote the Box Art story for both Bells, the Airacobra and the X-1, being released in December. Another two Box Art stories, for the Bf 109E-4 and the Albatros D.V, were written by the no less experienced Jan Bobek. I was supposed to add the last article, about the scene depicted on the box of the FM-1, but I, like Yoav, got it wrong and ended up with a rather extensive article about the escort aircraft carrier USS Block Island, in which, in addition to the Wildcats, Avengers, aircraft carriers and destroyers also involve a considerable number of German submarines. It will be my honor to present all this to you in the January issue of magazine.

 

In Closing…

 So, I managed to not shorten the editorial too much this time either. So sorry. I won't shorten it next time either, because the next editorial will be about the our plans for 2024, and that certainly can't be anything short. Today I already wrote a little about said plans for next year, but it was only a small hint of what is to come next month.

 A few more organizational comments. Today begins our next Sweep event, with sixteen items going on sale, mostly older Weekends in original packaging and a few Profipacks, also in old boxes. They will be available while stocks last, which in some cases isn’t much.

Also on sale are the December batch of new Bundles. They will be on sale until the January Bundles are launched. So you have about a month to buy these items.

 As every year in December, our sales department will be open until December 23rd. But please note, the last orders for which we guarantee dispatch this year, by December 23rd, will be for orders received no later than Monday, December 18th. At the same time, we will make an exception in the launch of  January’s new releases, which will be available to order from December 15th. After the holidays, the sales department will reopen on Wednesday January 3rd, 2024.

 Dear friends, thank you for the support you have shown us in this difficult year. I wish you a Merry Christmas, a lot of peace and good health, and a Happy New Year's.

 

Happy Modeling!

Vladimir Sulc

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On the limit

The article comes from the issue 12/2023

Info EDUARD 12/2023, Page 4
Info EDUARD 12/2023, Page 5
Browse PDF
12/2023
Info EDUARD 12/2023

Good day, Dear Friends, After a three-year break, we made a return to Telford, and it was a triumphant return at that! After all, Britain is the cradle of our business, and the Telford event is the biggest exhibition in our field and it would be a mistake to miss it. Our plan is to continue attending such events, beginning with Nuremberg in January/February.

12/1/2023

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