This set is another of Eduard’s new “Steel” seatbelt line. The set is intended for early WWII RAF aircraft and includes three sets of shoulder harnesses and four sets of lap-belts. There is no explanation for the extra lap-belt set, as the instructions only show installation of the full set of belts.

Each harness set includes just four parts, a left lap-belt, a right lap-belt and two part shoulder straps. As I had one of the new Airfix Hurricane Mk. I kits in my to-do pile, I decided to try out the set on it. The Airfix cockpit is really well designed and looks great. I used a micro drill to open up the slot in the seatback and at the top of the armor back plate. Some photographs of Hurricane seats show the “y” portion of the shoulder harness going through the slot in the back of seat. I elected not to do this as the Eduard parts are only painted on one side, so the unpainted steel would have shown had I routed the belt through the back of the seat.

Some of the hardest details to make realistically in modern jet fighters (or any aircraft) are the molded – in seatbelts, especially those on ejection seats. Using strips of masking tape leaves a bit to be desired. Eduard has come to the rescue with sets of photo-etched seatbelts for different aircraft.

The Eduard steel photo-etched set for the F-4 in 1/48 scale is a very impressive set of pre-painted photo etched parts that are intended as replacements to kit parts. While the set is simply marked as F-4 Seatbelts, Grey, the aircraft kit that I used this example was the Monogram F-4C/D kit.

This photoetched set requires some work to use it in previous manufacturer’s F-4 kits. All the molded-in detail for the seatbelts had to be filed and ground off the seats. Specific to Monogram’s F-4, the seat bottoms are molded as part of the cockpit floor.

CBU stands for Cluster Bomb Unit, which is a type of bomb, or munitions, that dispenses smaller bombs across a designated area.

Eduard has created a resin armament set that covers one of the more unusual bombs, especially a type that is not seen very often on aircraft and not included in most aircraft kits.

This simple kit consists of 12 parts cast in resin. Assembly is straightforward, consisting of detaching, sanding, and then gluing the tail fins (Parts R31) to the main bodies (Parts R30).

Each bomb is painted olive drab. Care must be taken with the decals, as they are both thin and fragile. Once the decals are applied, a very convincing miniature version of the CBU is ready to load on a 1/48 aircraft.

Many thanks go out to Eduard for providing the review sample.