The Bf-109F is considered by some to be the perfect version of the venerable fighter. It certainly has its share of unique camouflage. Because of that it is a favorite of modelers. As a pilot, I love to detail the cockpit so this set was a natural for me.

The Big Sin sets are designed to bring separate sets together in one box with a significant savings. These allow the modeler to add some really nice detail at a good price. This set contains three separate Brassin items. The first item is the cockpit which completely replaces the kit cockpit with resin, photo etch and clear film. The other two sets are for the landing gear and wheels.

The cockpit features some excellent detail in resin and well thought out use of photo etch. There are 17 pieces of light and dark grey resin. I could not find any blemishes on my parts. Two frets of photo etch are included. One set is pre-painted and the other isn’t. The pre-painted fret features the instrument panel and seatbelts. The other fret has various parts throughout the cockpit, including the trim wheels and rear access panel. A clear acetate has the clear portions of the gunsight on it. And finally there is a decal sheet should you decide to use that instead of the pre-painted one. I elected to use the pre-painted on as I love the detail painting on the parts. I did have to trim down part R65 ever so slightly so that it would fit in the position. I trimmed the mounts for instrument panel which allows it to fit better. Other than that, everything fit perfectly. The gunsight is a thing of beauty. The fit of the cockpit to the fuselage is really good. I did have to sand the sides slightly to get the cockpit to fit properly. As long as you can close the fuselage without force the wings will fit perfectly as well.

The next set is the undercarriage legs in Brass. This provides the strength and has the added features of the brake lines. There is no mold line to clean up. There are two struts and two resin landing gear doors. I used mine on a winter camouflaged aircraft which allows me to have the added strength of the brass along with the detail. The only downside of this set is that the brake lines on the real thing curl around and stand a little proud of the door. On this set the brake line is molded onto the gear door. The other great thing is that the landing gear sits as if it has weight on it. I attached mine with 5 minute epoxy to allow it to me positioned.

To compliment the Brass landing gear is a beautiful set of resin wheels. These wheels feature excellent detail on both sides. They even have the cotter pin that holds the wheel on. The tail wheel is a one piece affair but it does not suffer from lack of detail. It has the dust cover molded in place. The set also features a masking sets for all the wheels. The hardest part of this set is removing the raised detail from the pour blocks. I used a razor saw to very carefully remove them and them sand them down ever so slightly. They fit perfectly.

Now these three sets would cost over $60, $60.22 to be exact. But by boxing them together you only pay $42.46, which saves you $17.77. That is a 30% savings. If you like detail then this cockpit and the landing gear with wheels is about as good as they come. These are a good investment in your Friedrich. They look great and are relatively easy to install.

Highly recommended

Thanks to Eduard and IPMS/USA for the review copy. You can obtain yours by contacting Eduard directly at www.eduard.com or your local hobby shop on online retailer.