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.
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 this project, we encountered difficulties and pitfalls, whether technical, organizational or administrative, which we initially did not see coming. Of course, that’s half the fun with such adventures.
That is why I am pleased to announce the upcoming release of the premiere issue of the Eduard Modeler's Den online monthly magazine. It will be released next week, on Friday, December 13th. The premiere issue will be available on the Triobo platform for free. Pay attention to the time, it will be in the afternoon, around 5:00pm local time. From the first issue, which will be published in January 2025, EMD will be a paid resource. Access to each issue will cost 5 Euros, or around 5 USD. The cost will be offset in the subscriber’s favor, everyone who pays for access to permanent reading and also downloads a given EMD issue will receive a one-time discount coupon for purchases off the Eduard e-shop for 10% of the purchase price, and it will not be limited in terms of use in conjunction with other offers.
EMD is a paid supplement to our regular ongoing newsletter, and its concept is derived from it, and will be based on historical and professional articles, interviews and reports. It will also include a section dedicated to current news from the modeling market. Unlike the standard newsletter, however, the focus will not be on our products, which will be referred to minimally on an as-needed basis when relevant. In fact, within the news section called Burst Shots, we will focus on developments from other manufacturers. We also assume that over time, advertisements from manufacturers, magazines, and possibly even modeling events will appear in our EMD.
So what will we offer in the premiere issue of EMD? Besides the Editorial, which in this case is not written by me, but by the editor-in-chief of our newsletter and indeed, the EMD, Jan Zdiarsky, there is an interview with military pilot John ‘Lucky’ Lakadoo, which was conducted by Matt Mabe with the 102-year-old veteran of the 100th Bomb Group of the 8th Air Force this year, and whose transcript and translation into Czech was taken care of by Jan Zdiarsky. The historical article by Don Caldwell is dedicated to the first raid on Schweinfurt and Regensburg. It was supplemented with historical ‘notebooks’ written by Jan Zdiarsky and Jan Bobek. I wrote the report titled Submarines at Manitowoc, but its not just about the Wisconsin Maritime Museum in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. It is a bit of an experimental work and it will be up to you how much you delve into the offered topics. The historical column and reflections on current topics are written by Jan Bobek, and the author of the already mentioned report on current news regarding plastic kits and their accessories is Marian Cihon. In total, it will be almost 100 pages of reading covering history and current events. It is so much reading that it should last you at least until Christmas, and perhaps even beyond. Should keep you busy til the next one is posted.
On Friday, December 6th, the last Sweep sales event of the year will begin on our e-shop. The offer will include twenty-four kits and more than 200 items of related accessory items, all discounted by 30%. The sale will last until the beginning of January, 2025 and it will also be possible to shop during the Christmas and New Year break, when our sales department will be closed. That will be December 22nd, 2024 to January 3rd, 2025 and in that span, no orders will be going out. As a result, please note that orders received after December 16th will not be shipped until January 4th, 2025. The sale will run until stocks last, which will be especially important for accessory sets, which are not in stock in large quantities in most cases. You can find detailed information about Sweep 1224 sale on the page dedicated to it.
As we do every year every year, we are releasing a photoetched New Year's card. As always, it refers to one of the important projects of the upcoming year, and because there has always been great interest in our New Year's cards, we decided to release it for regular sale this year. You can order it with other December releases on our e-shop.
My Friends, I wish a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous Happy New Year, hoping that all your wishes come true!
Vladimir Sulc