Heinkel He.219 Wheels - 1:32 Eduard Brassin

[Mike]

He.219 Wheels
1:32 Eduard Brassin (632016)

The Revell He.219 has been with us a few months now, and along comes Eduard to improve the detail on the kit. This resin replacement wheel set is a drop-in replacement for the kit parts, improving the detail and sharpness, as well as adding fine detail that just isn't present on the kit parts.

The set arrives in Eduard's chunky Brassin card box, and underneath the slabs of protective foam you will find two bags of resin, a sheet of masking material (not pictured) and an instruction booklet. One bag contains five resin tyres - four for the two twin wheeled main gear legs, and one for the long nose wheel leg. There are nine hub parts in the other bag, as the nose wheel has one hub moulded in. Casting is up to Eduard's usual very high standard, and the resin is tough, dense and without any visible bubbles. The detail on the tyres has to be seen to be properly appreciated, and all the main wheels have a very fine diamond tread, while the nose tyre is smooth, and all of the sidewalls have both structural detail and tyre statistics moulded in on both sides.

Construction is very simple. Each tyre is removed from its casting block, and as usual the main block is on the contact patch, so won't be seen. Some out-riggers have been included to improve casting reliability, and these have been cleverly designed so that they don't interfere with the tread pattern, with a "landing patch" that is centred on one diamond shaped tread block, and has a wafer thin (in places absent) film between that and the main attachment plug. The hubs are attached with large cylindrical casting blocks, so a razor saw or Dremel with cutting disc will be the weapon of choice, being careful of the dust created. The hubs have square attachment sockets to fix directly to the kit main gear legs, and they are keyed at the rear to ensure they are correctly located in the tyre part. The nose gear leg is glued together around the nose wheel, so painting the tyre before attachment would be an idea here.

Painting should be easy thanks to the inclusion of a pre-cut sheet of kabuki style masking material, which has ten doughnut shaped rings to permit painting of the hub after the tyre, although if you're spraying the hub colour, masking the rest of the tyre would be wise to prevent overspray.

Conclusion
Another highly detailed set of wheels from the Eduard Brassin range that will improve the look of the model, adding a very subtle sag to the tyres to give the impression of the weight of the aircraft resting on the tyres. Superb casting and the inclusion of masks is just a bonus.

Highly recommended.

Review sample courtesy of