Eduard A6M2-N Rufe Gun Bays (648849 for Eduard) 1:48

[Mike]

A6M2-N Rufe Gun Bays (648849 for Eduard)

1:48 Eduard Brassin

 

 

We’ve just finished our review of the brand-new Mitsubishi A6M Zero derived Floatplane, the Suisen 2, more commonly known as the Rufe, which you can see here, and it’s a beautiful kit that’s every bit as well-detailed as its cousin, also from Eduard.  If you’re inclined to cram as much detail into your models as you can, then Eduard also have you covered, with a raft of individual upgrade sets that allows the modeller to pick and choose which areas they’re interested in improving, or go mad and splurge on the lot, as your budget and inclination dictates.  You’ll find the first batch of sets here, and we’ve now got the gun bays on in our sights.

 

This set is a renaming of the same set for the recent Eduard Zero, performing the same task of replicating the detail found under the gun bay doors for the wing guns of the Rufe.  As is now usual with Eduard's smaller resin sets, they arrive in the new shallow Brassin cardboard box, with the resin parts safely cocooned in bags, and the instructions folded around acting as padding.

 

 

There are sixteen 3D printed resin parts and a fret of Photo-Etch (PE) inside the box along with the instructions, the first step showing the portions of the wings that should be removed in red, preparing the way for the new parts, but showing its heritage by also depicting the gear bays of the Zero in the drawings.  Just pretend you didn’t see those, right?  The panels removed can be discarded, so cutting from the centre and sanding it to the correct shape should be the simplest method.  The main bay parts have the cannon slotted into the long partition, and the drum magazine in the compartment next to it, adding a length of 0.3mm wire from your stock from the front of the breech, snaking away into the interstices of the wing.  The magazine compartment is trapped on both top and bottom with a PE frame, while the gun bay has PE on the lower, all of which fit inside the frames rather than on top of them so they don’t increase the height of the assembly.

 

The finished bay is glued into the lower wing and has a pair of PE rib sections inserted into the leading edge on either side of the gun barrel, adding small stiffeners midway to the front.  The bay doors slide into their hinges at the trailing edges of the bay, and the removable panels from the leading edge and underside are painted as per the rest of the model to be placed around the model as if by the maintenance crew once the model is completed.

 

All the colour call-outs through the build process are given in Gunze Sangyo codes, as is usual with Eduard kits and upgrade sets, as it is their paint system of choice.

 

Very highly recommended.

 

 

Review sample courtesy of