Is Eduard coming back to 1/32

[fastterry]

On 03/03/2024 at 23:28, VMA131Marine said:

How much too tall are their 109 fuselages? Because if it’s less than a millimeter I’m not bothered.

I had a bit of depression come over me when I read about some other supposed inaccuracies of the Eduard 109s as I have about 8 or so in the stash. I knew about the ballsup with the original tooling and that there was a couple of left overs ie the exhaust and the uc legs. I have a Hasegawa and Tamiya 109G-6 built along with a Eduard G-14. Running my trusty micrometer over all three I came up with the following figures. All were measured at the trailing edge of the wing from the bottom of the fuselage to the top of the canopy. The Hasegawa and the Tamiya were almost identical at 27.6mm whilst the Eduard G-14 was 28.3mm. That makes a difference of 0.7mm which would be 1.05mm taller in 1/32 if Tamiya made a 1/32 G-6. I think that is not worth worrying about in the scheme of things. I personally think that Eduard would be mad to do the late war 109s and Fw190s in 1/32 as there are a number of state of the art kits available as competition. I can see the rational for them doing a Spitfire IX as the Czechs flew them at the end of the war and into peacetime. Earlier Merlin Spitfires will run into the proposed Kotare versions but as they are a long way from Europe and are not cheap Eduard should be ok there. As previously said by a number of people the MiG-21 and all its versions are a no brainer as Eduard obviously has lots of data on them.

 

TRF 

[Sabrejet]

13 hours ago, Piotr Mikolajski said:

 

I am afraid that this type of opinion is meaningless if it is not supported by evidence. And evidence is not the claim itself, the opinion of person X or Y, a long thread on some forum or someone's deep belief.

 

Over the last decade I have seen many long threads about what mistakes manufacturers have made, how unfamiliar they are with the aircraft or tank, how they are unable to make the proper kit. When it turned out that the manufacturer had made the model based not on Holy Plans or the tales of Mr. I Have This Vehicle In My Shed but on surviving museum equipment and factory documentation, I have never seen an apology from those so keen to accuse the manufacturer of all the evils of this world. Therefore, if someone comes with complaints, he should immediately back them up with proper evidence.

 

In the case of complaints about Eduard models, giving feedback to the manufacturer is very easy. Mr. Sulc is present on the Czech Modelforum, he looks into the special thread concerning Eduard every day, so it is possible to discuss with him directly. They don't even need to know Czech, they can write in English. But I don't recall all those complaining on various forums daring to write there. It looked as if they wanted to complain about the models, but in such a way that the company would not comment on it in any way. Of course, I don't suspect them of lacking courage, certainly none of them knew of the existence of Modelforum. If they only knew, they would certainly have told that Mr. Sulc! Oh, how they would tell him. And how he would listen to them.

 

100%. There are those who suck the life out of this hobby by spotting 'errors' in kits, which often are no such thing and more usually of minimal importance. In fact often these 'errors' are based on recently-generated plans which are not subject to any kind of peer review. The meaning of 'primary source' is also often not understood.

 

Back to 1/32 Eduard: some inter-war US bomber types please! (starting with Curtiss B-2 Condor)

[Col.]

3 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

Back to 1/32 Eduard: some inter-war US bomber types please! (starting with Curtiss B-2 Condor)

Personally I feel 1/32nd scale will suit many interwar types and the Schneider racers in particular but the market is never going to be enough for the likes of Eduard to justify the expense of tooling up such kits  

[Sabrejet]

52 minutes ago, Col. said:

Personally I feel 1/32nd scale will suit many interwar types and the Schneider racers in particular but the market is never going to be enough for the likes of Eduard to justify the expense of tooling up such kits  

 

I know, but it doesn't hurt to remind every so often that the market is flooded with WW2 types while other eras are very poorly served. It's usually less than a year after the 'definitive' kit of a Bf.109/Spitfire/P-51 being issued that someone's bleating that we need an "up-to-date" kit of exactly the same type.

[TheKinksFan]

1 hour ago, Sabrejet said:

I know, but it doesn't hurt to remind every so often that the market is flooded with WW2 types while other eras are very poorly served.

The market is flooded with them because they are the ones that sell the most. I sold all of my 1/48 and 1\32 kits, and have noticed that it's pretty difficult to get rid of biplanes from the inter-war era. Especially in a small country where there isn't so many modellers the demand for those is minimal. The percentage of modellers who are interested and buy kits other than WW2, Cold War & Modern subjects, is depressingly low. 

[Piotr Mikolajski]

10 hours ago, Sabrejet said:

Back to 1/32 Eduard: some inter-war US bomber types please! (starting with Curtiss B-2 Condor)

 

With less than 20 built and a wingspan larger than the B-25, I don't think any company will make this model with injection moulding technology, even as a short run. I'm not sure if resin companies would dare to make a 1/32 scale kit too but maybe this is the job for Lukgraph. But such kit will be really expensive - 1/72 resin kit from Ardpol was priced at £80 in 2019. 

[Harold55]

Eduard cut their teeth on 1/48 WWI subjects and their newer 1/48 kits such as the Camel are fantastic.  All they would need to do is scale them up and they would have real winners.  And this seems to be the direction bi-planes have been going.

[Sabrejet]

1 hour ago, Piotr Mikolajski said:

 

With less than 20 built and a wingspan larger than the B-25, I don't think any company will make this model with injection moulding technology, even as a short run. I'm not sure if resin companies would dare to make a 1/32 scale kit too but maybe this is the job for Lukgraph. But such kit will be really expensive - 1/72 resin kit from Ardpol was priced at £80 in 2019. 

...it was a joke?

[Exam89]

13 hours ago, fastterry said:

That makes a difference of 0.7

It's not just the overall height of the fuselage. There's also a higher hood height in front of the cabin. It's not the numbers that are scary for Eduard, but the visually large nose

[Piotr Mikolajski]

1 hour ago, Sabrejet said:

...it was a joke?

 

Unfortunately not, this is the last price recorded in Moje Hobby shop. Both boxes of Curtiss TL-32 Condor were even more expensive, £86.26 each:

https://www.super-hobby.com/products/Curtiss-TL-32-Condor-China-bomber.html

https://www.super-hobby.com/products/Curtiss-TL-32-Condor-Bird-Antarctic-Expedition.html

[Sabrejet]

2 minutes ago, Piotr Mikolajski said:

 

Unfortunately not, this is the last price recorded in Moje Hobby shop.

 

No. It was a joke, deliberately thus.

[Overflow]

Given how many 1/48 scale kits need Eduard's attention, have a bit lukewarm feel towards them branching out into 1/32 at a time when they are not able or willing to release more than one 48th and 72nd scale tooling yearly.

If we were talking about Hasegawa new tooled numbers in its hayday, then more than welcome, Eduard simply can't or is not willing to reach that numbers and subjects( modern and not so modern jets).

Regarding subjects if they can release ww2 single prop without engine but with their current surface detail for 60-70€, they won't have trouble selling them-whatever it is.

 

Edited March 21 by Overflow

[Piotr Mikolajski]

1 hour ago, Overflow said:

when they are not able or willing to release more than one 48th and 72nd scale tooling yearly

 

It doesn't make much sense to look at how many new tooling a company is releasing, because this is putting an equal sign between a project consisting of one mould and one consisting of a few or even a dozen moulds. Almost all Eduard's new releases are whole projects with multiple versions each. And well, here is what the last six years of new tooling production from Eduard looks like:

• 2018: (1/48) Hawker Tempest | (1/72) MiG-21
• 2019: (1/48) P-51D | (1/72) Fokker D.VII
• 2020: (1/48) Spitfire Mk.I | (1/72) VŠB-1 Kuňkadlo, Zlin Z-37A Čmelák
• 2021: (1/48) A6M Zero, Sopwith Camel, Zlín Trenér | (1/72) —
• 2022: (1/48) F4F Wildcat | (1/72) Avia S-199
• 2023: (1/48) Bf 109K-4, A6M2-N Rufe | (1/72) Bf 109F

There was no 1/72 novelty in 2021, but the year before there were two, while the total was 15 projects in six years.