Eduard recently released a Quattro kit of the Avia B.534, a Czech biplane which participated in World War 2. I got to review the kit, and now I’m doing a second build utilizing Eduard’s PE upgrade for the Avia.

The Kit

You get a single PE fret with enough add-ons to do a single aircraft. There is a lagniappe here, as there are 4 instrument panels, so you can do another 3 with them.

The fuselage parts are side panels for the cockpit, a set of seat and shoulder belts, a control stick, front and rear radiator grills, and a step. There is also a “ring & cross” gun sight, a tail wheel add-on for the Bulgarian version and a tail wheel protector for the tow tug version. Unfortunately the last 3 items weren’t for the version I built.

For the wings you get the best part of this set…There are PE wing bracing wires.

Building/Assembly

The upgrades start in step 1 of the model instructions. I added the interior details to both sides of the fuselage interior. Then the seat belts and the control stick. The cockpit is finished with the PE instrument panel. Everything fit pretty well, and the seat belts and panel were already colored. My panel had a spot on one side where the black failed to cover. No problem, I used a Sharpie.

The radiator assembly glues to the bottom of the cockpit floor. There are detail parts for the front and rear of the radiator.

Once the cockpit and radiator assemblies were installed, the cockpit area looked really spiffy. Then I had to put the cowling on, and hid most of the detail. Sigh. That’s why I wanted photographic evidence of how nice that cockpit looks.

Everything on this kit fit very nicely. I painted the underside of the wings and fuselage silver, and the uppers khaki. I’m still unsure what the color ought to be, but 30118 pretty closely matches the colors on the color scheme/decal instructions.

After I painted the fuselage, I had to repaint the radiator intake silver because of overspray.

After painting I assembled the upper wing to the lower wing and fuselage. Once I got that done, I was ready to install the flying wires. Way back in the second step of the instructions, when you’re installing the lower wing, you need to drill some small holes in the fuselage side, the lower wing, and the upper wing. These are the mounting holes for the flying wires. Be careful when you drill these holes, they don’t go through the wing, and it’s easy to go too far. Ask me how I know.

Once the glue on the wings and struts was well set, I installed the wires. There are two sets of wires on each side. There’s a double set which runs from the fuselage to the top wing, just inboard of the N strut. Then there’s another pair of wires which come as a single assembly which runs from the top wing just outboard of the fuselage struts down to where the N strut hits the bottom wing.

This was not an easy project. The parts are delicate and it was very hard to see things between the wings. But I did get it done successfully. One of the things that would be a huge problem is if the wires were either too long or too short. Eduard got it perfect on all 4 of the wire assemblies. This is especially important because the wires from the top wing to the fuselage are not the same length.

I had the most trouble getting all 4 ends of the fuselage to top wing wires in place. The wires have a cross piece, and the wires tended to catch on something and bend slightly. With the close tolerances of a 1/144 model, it was necessary to straighten them. Several times. Thank goodness for CA and accelerator.

Overall Evaluation

Highly recommended. In spite of my notes about the difficulty of the wing wires, they are SO much simpler than trying to rig a plane this size.

Many thanks to Eduard for this nice upgrade, and to IPMS USA for letting me make my Avia look better.