IPMS/USA again thanks the Eduard team for sending us more of their prolific output targeted toward improving already great kits. Thanks to Phil and John for obtaining the sets for the team.

Eduard is a company that has truly come of age. They seem to go from one success to another, and there is not a part of their range I have not used or tried. In this case, I have the “BIG ED” set for the new ICM HE-111H3, and it fills a major niche.

Thanks to Eduard and the IPMS USA team for joining forces to make sure I have this set on my workbench!

In the “Big Ed” format, Eduard provides one each of the following photoetch frets:

History and Background (thanks to WikiPedia)

Brimstone is an air-launched ground attack missile developed by MBDA for Britain's Royal Air Force. It was originally intended for "fire and forget" use against mass formations of enemy armour, using a millimetric wave (mmW) active radar homing seeker to ensure accuracy even against moving targets. Experience in Afghanistan led to the addition of laser guidance in the dual-mode Brimstone missile, allowing a "spotter" to pick out specific targets when friendly forces or civilians were in the area. The tandem shaped charge warhead is much more effective against modern tanks than older similar weapons such as the AGM-65G Maverick, while the small blast area minimises collateral damage. Three Brimstones are carried on a launcher that occupies a single weapon station, allowing a single aircraft to carry many missiles.

The Aircraft

The DC-8 was Douglas’ version of the Boeing 707. I reviewed Minicraft’s DC-8-73 back in 2014.

Unfortunately, sitting on the shelf for 5 years has taken its toll on this model. It’s still quite good looking, and when Phil Peterson, who manages the sending of review items, said there was a landing gear set available, I took it. When I picked up the model from the shelf to see how tough it would be to remove the original gear, one of the main gear legs fell off. OK, SAC to the rescue.

There are also kits of the DC-8 61 and -71. These are pretty much the same kit, with a different fuselage. Minicraft also released their DC-8 63 and -73 as a bagged kit with no decals. The big advantage to this kit is that it has the engines for either the -63 or-73, which the original kits didn’t have.

In conjunction with the release of its new 1/72 MiG-21 series, Eduard has released an Overtree set of the weapons sprue that is included with its new MiG-21MF kits. In looking at the weapons included on the sprue, I expect that this sprue has been designed to be a common sprue through-out all its planned MiG-21 kits.

Two Bobs Aviation Graphics is one of leaders in aviation decals with an impressive variety in 1/32, 1/48 and 1/72 scale. This latest release has very interesting markings used by VAQ-209 with a “Star Wars” theme on the aircraft. A black/white Darth Vader helmet, the word “VADER” on the spine and VADER 1 on a black fuel tank are on the CAG aircraft. The line jets have a gray/white Darth Vader helmet on the tail.

The sheets are printed perfectly without any print register errors. The small markings are very fine and easy to read. All the markings are included from unit markings down to the stencils and walkways. Stencils and other markings are included for the fuel tanks and jamming pods. There is one (front and back) color instructions sheet that clearly show placement of markings for the three subjects. The instructions indicate the correct FS paint colors for each aircraft and easy to distinguish where each color is applied.