Airscale provides some excellent aircraft instrument dials, but until now you had to cut them out and add them to kit instrument panels. Well, now you can build your own instrument panels with the aid of their new bezels.

There are 46 distinct shapes, but that doesn’t mean there are only 46 pieces on the single brass fret. There are multiple bezels, allowing you to do anything you need to do when scratchbuilding an instrument panel. Don’t think that it stops there. While marketed for the instrument panel, they can be used for numerous other things. The sky is the limit.

There are US, German, RAF, and WWI instruments represented on the fret. The parts are arranged in 9 rows with each style of bezel labeled with a letter on the instructions. The instructions are printed in full color on card stock to protect the fret. The instructions indicate what each bezel is designed to represent. Some are multi-layered, so do your research.

Inside the Ersatzteiliste (parts manual) for the Bf-109E is a special tools section. Before now, if you wanted to add this to your diorama, you were limited to scratchbuilding it, and then you still had to find the tools to fit. Eduard has made this a lot easier.

Contained on a single brass fret is a roll of tools, a special tool kit, and all the tools for both. The first assembly sequence is a tool roll which can be looped over the wing. There is a second one that is all folded up. These are both perfectly formed and textured to give that canvas look. The tools fit along a canvas strap. It might be easier to add this strap from tape, but the PE part is quite adequate. As a personal aside, my thought is to use the Eduard PE part as a template to cut the “canvas” roll out of masking tape, both for scale thickness and that more realistic canvas texture that masking tape suggests.

I was given Minicraft’s B-17G for a review. Just as I was about to start the project, I was at IPMS Las Vegas “Best of the West” contest, and found a set of 1/144 decals for the B-17G. The decals included in the kit were perfectly OK, but the subject matter of this sheet made me drag out my wallet and buy it.

The first plane on the sheet is “American Beauty”, 2S*G. A friend and co-worker of my father was the top turret gunner and flight engineer on this aircraft. So it has a personal connection to me.

THE DECAL

The decal sheet itself is very good. When you finish cutting out the decals for one aircraft, you still have a solid sheet, not something that looks like a lace doily. Good planning on their part, and I appreciate that.

The subject matter of the other three planes is also very interesting – “Little Miss Mischief” of the 91st Bomb Group, “My Devotion” (an F model) of the 351st BG, and the famous “A Bit o’ Lace” from the 427th BG.