Editorial

Good day, my Friends! So, here we are, in the home stretch. This is our last installment of our newsletter for the year, and it was a year with very little boredom attached to it. On Saturday, we successfully completed our final show of this year, the renewed Plastic Winter in Bratislava, Slovakia. Our gratitude goes out to the organizers for a great event, and we find ourselves back hard at work in that said home stretch with the finalizing of the development of the P-40E Warhawk kit in 1:48th scale, as well as with the development of accessories for it.

Good day, my Friends!

So, here we are, in the home stretch. This is

our last installment of our newsletter for the

year, and it was a year with very little boredom

attached to it. On Saturday, we successfully

completed our final show of this year,

the renewed Plastic Winter in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Our gratitude goes out to the organizers for

a great event, and we find ourselves back hard at

work in that said home stretch with the finalizing

of the development of the P-40E Warhawk kit in

1:48th scale, as well as with the development of

accessories for it.

So I think that it makes sense to start off today's

editorial with a report on the development status

of this kit, which will certainly be of interest to

everyone who ordered the Royal Class P-40E

Warhawk during the preorder process that

went up last week. On that occasion, we also

introduced the make-up of the kit. Unfortunately,

we weren’t in a position to show off test shots of

the sprues, because all we really had at the time

was one, with small details on it. Not a lot to show

off. However, this changed in a big way during

the past week. We have completed three more

forms, and as of today we have these finished

and tested, giving us four sprue frames out of six,

three with smaller parts and one containing the

fuselage. This week, the last two forms will be

finished and likely tested, and these are the wing

and clear parts. We are already producing plastic

from two of the forms and another will be put

to work in the coming days. The decal sheet will

also be ready this week, and we are working on

other components of the kit. Some components,

such as the 3D prints of the Brassin inclusions,

are already being produced, the photoetched is

on the verge of completion, and only the masks

are outstanding. These need to be tested on a test

shot for fine tuning, and that will be available this

week. With the completion of the instructions,

we are waiting for the first test assembly of the

kit and the valuable information that this will

yield. The goal is to have the box, the instructions

and the decals at the printers before Christmas

so that we have everything ready for packaging

in the first week of the new year. And while we

will be filling Royal Class orders in January,

we will be finishing the preparation of the

successor to the Royal Class release, the Limited

Edition ‘Pacific Star’ kit, dedicated to the P-40E

Warhawk deployed to the southwest PTO. If you

don't want to spend the money on the more cost

intensive Limited and Royal Class kits, you can

wait until June for the first Profipack P-40E to

be released, or until the summer for the British

Kittyhawk Mk.Ia. As always, we will offer the new

kits gradually in all our editions with differing

levels of included parts, from the deluxe Royal

Class kit through Limited Editions to the Profipack

kits and finally, the base Weekend Edition items.

You can find out what the next stage will be

regarding further development versions of the

Warhawk in my January newsletter editorial,

which will be largely devoted to new products

for 2025. You can be sure that 2025 will not be

limited to Warhawks and Kittyhawks.

You may be surprised to learn that among

the new December releases we only have two

new kits, the Spitfire Mk.IXe in1:48th and in the

Profipack line, and the Bf 109 G-14 also Profipack,

but in 1:72nd scale. Both are interesting new

items, with a carefully selected assortment of

colour schemes. This is especially relevant to

the Spitfire, which we have released before, but

we came to the conclusion that previous decal

options were somewhat leaning towards bland.

We decided to fix that and give the second edition

of the Spitfire Mk.IXe a somewhat contemporary

flair and elegance. I hope we succeeded and

that you, as our customers, will appreciate the

effort. The main reason why we have fewer new

releases in December is the second release of

the Limited Edition ‘The Bloody Hundredth 1943’

kit, a 1:48th scale B-17F. This is a kit that, due

to its price and scope in terms of both size and

makeup, is expected to overshadow anything

else released in the same month. That's why

we've slowed down our release activity a bit so

as not to create an unnecessary overpressure on

the supply side of things. But don't worry, with

the January releases we'll be back to normal and

raise that overpressure a little in the opposite

direction!

You may have noted a new media effort

being put forth by us in November, the Eduard

On Air Podcast, moderated by Katka Borecka.

In the first three episodes, dedicated to the

P-40E Warhawk project described above, three

interviewed guests took turns: myself, Richard

Plos and Jakub Nademlejnsky. To be honest,

the first three episodes are a lot about dipping our

toes into the water of the learning curve involved

with this endeavor. On the other hand, I think it is

clear that we are learning relatively quickly, and

as such, presenting you with the opportunity to

have more and more fun with it. The intensity of

our podcast activity will decrease in the coming

months compared to its November launch;

the plan is to publish one podcast, linked to

the publication of our newsletter, per month.

We will focus on the latest news of the current

month, explain various production and design

processes, introduce you to the people behind

our products, our external collaborators, and

generally give you a peek behind the scenes of

creating kits, developing accessories for other

products, and even their sales. From time to time,

we will broadcast special editions of Eduard On

Air, especially when new premieres are being

released, such as the current P-40E or the

P-40N and MiG-21F next year. Special editions

before and after E-day are also expected.

In a year's time, we will tell you how far Eduard

On Air has developed. I am interested in listening

to that one myself!

Our home stretch sprint includes another

project, the launch of our paid supplement to our

newsletter that we have labeled the ‘Modeler's

Den’. We call it EMD internally, and we have been

working on it for a long time. We have postponed

the release date of the first issue several times,

which is, to be honest, very similar to some of

our other projects. Typically, it is no different

than it used to be with our new kit releases until

recently. Many modelers still express a certain

annoyance at the slow pace of our kit projects,

and according to them, we are unnecessarily

messing around with their wish lists. After all,

The ‘Eduard Year’ became a concept in our field

at one time, and it was a reference to generally

altered release schedules. But believe me, it is

not because we are lazy or incompetent. It is

simply because we are trying to do honest work.

In the case of EMD, such a long delay occurred

primarily because during the preparation of

EDITORIAL

INFO Eduard4

December 2024