Eduard RN Battleship Roma Detail Sets

[Shar2]

RN Battleship Roma Detail Sets

1:350 Eduard

 

Since Trumpeter released the Roma as long ago as 2012, it’s taken the re-boxings released this year for Eduard to release anything for it.  These two sets, each with two sheets, although the second sheet of set two barely constitutes a sheet.  As usual you will need to remove quite a few parts of the kit details before the PE can be used.

 

53-199 – Main Deck and Guns. The first set consists of two sheets of etched brass crammed full of new parts, not including multiples. The sheets contain the usual numerous small parts such as the watertight doors, deck hatches, vents, skylights, vertical ladders, and anchor chains, complete with chain stoppers. There are also new jibs for both the small cranes and the large aircraft handling crane, loads of replacement deck houses, ammunition lockers, parts to details the winches, capstans, splinter shields, barbette walkways, breakwaters, support braces for the searchlight towers, boat cradles, funnel caps, and a complete replacement for the ships catapult. 

 

There are also new mast platforms, complete with support braces, yard arms complete with Jacobs ladders and halliards. The boat handling booms have cable rollers fitted as well as other fittings to the uprights. The main turrets are fitted out with a new AA platform, splinter shields, ammunition racks, vertical ladders, new doors for the rangefinder extensions, ammunition lockers, and strake around the base of eh turrets and to finish them off, each gun barrel can be fitted with their individual tampions.

 

 

 

 

53-200 – AA Guns.  Naturally, this two sheet set is to add detail to the kits AA guns, but, not exclusively, as with most Eduard sets. The secondary armament turrets are fitted with new AA mountings, including supports, ready use lockers, vertical ladders, hatches and barrel tampions. The smaller turrets have new hatches, and canvas bags, but only to be used in the extreme elevation. The smaller AA weapons are all given various amounts of new detail and could include new sights, seats, ammunition chutes, elevation arcs, hand wheels, levers, and foot pedals. In addition to the AA guns, there is also new detail for the paravanes, pipe brackets, liferaft ramps, searchlight hand wheels and grilles, rangefinder hatches, doors, and fittings. There are also handling trolleys for the ships aircraft, launching cradles. The RO.43 biplane is also given new supports for the main and wing floats, new struts for the wings and tailplane and finally a machine gun for the rear gunner.

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

This is another pair of very useful etched sets from Eduard.  The amount of detail covered is quite exhaustive and will require a fair amount of patience and time to get it all fitted correctly.  Some of the details are completely new, not found in the kit so research will be required to ensure it was fitted.  My biggest gripe is still the instructions, which really need to be made clearer, especially where parts positioning is concerned.  Still, that’s a personal thing, which doesn’t stop me from recommending this set to any one with the lovely Trumpeter kit.

 

Review sample courtesy of