Sincere appreciation to Eduard for providing yet another review item, and to the IPMS USA reviewer corps leaders for sending it to me!

This set continues Eduard’s effort to provide modelers with previously unavailable, well detailed resin sets. Forty-one resin parts, and photoetch - both color and unpainted, make up this set. You can assemble one F-4J cockpit with late model Mark IV Martin Baker Ejection seats.

The incorporation of opened gun bays is a nice way to set your Spitfire apart from the crowd and adds to any diorama.

This set allows the modelers build the left and right wing gun bays opened. It allows you to build the Mk.VIII gun bays and the associated armament. There are 20 pieces of resin and a fret of photo etch in the set. Working the set is easy enough. The instructions are quite easy to understand and are illustrated enough for the modeler to reproduce two beautiful gun bays.

I removed the gun covers by chain drilling the panels and sanding back to the panel lines. Adding the photo etch and resin parts was relatively easy. Just remove the parts from the pour blocks, paint and install. It really is that simple. Just follow the instructions. After opening the wing panels the resin piece fits on top of a photo etch bottom quite nicely with no thinning of the wing required and seamless mates up to the plastic parts.

The Eduard Spitfires have set a new standard in 1/48th scale Spitfires. Eduard’s approach is threefold. One is aimed at the ‘basic’ modeler with their Weekend Edition kits. Then there is the step up with their Profipack kits, a personal favorite. And finally they have all the Brassin items to upgrade along with some separate photoetch pieces.

This set is carefully boxed in a sturdy cardboard box with Styrofoam packing material and parts in a couple of ziplock type baggies so there is no breakage. This set comes with 30 resin parts in light grey resin. All the parts are precisely cast and perfectly formed. There is a fret of photo etch with most of the parts pre-painted. Then there is a small clear acetate or film included of the gunsight reflector. The instructions are included on two sheets with proper diagrams that are easy to understand. Color callouts are on the instructions and reference Gunze colors.

I have always liked the look of this British WWI fighter and this kit is the best available version on the market.

In the box is:

• 4 sprues molded in light grey
• 1 film sheet
• 1 photoetch parts sheet
• 1 masking sheet
• 1 decal sheet
• 1 instruction booklet

The sprues are well molded with only very minor flash, well positioned ejector pin marks. The detail is very fine and crisp. The panels are all great. The instruction book is great as usual for Eduard kits. There a few parts on the sprues that are no required for this build and are full defined in the instruction sheet. There are a few optional assembly decisions that you should make before you start and this is based in the aircraft version you want to build. I went with version D.

The new Kitty Hawk UH-1Y Venom is an awesome model, but it has lots of clear parts. Lots of clear parts. Masking them is a pain. I should know I did it four times and it took a long time to get it just right.

The masks are provided on a sheet of Kabuki tape that is the best masking material out there, in my opinion. The masks are explained on the instruction sheet. You will have to use liquid mask for the chin bubbles.

Lucky for me this set arrived right when I needed to paint a door that I made a mistake on. I used the set to prevent overspray on the freshly polished clear parts while I repainted the door. All the masks fit their appropriate spots perfectly. And when the masks were pulled off the resulting paint was perfect.