When Eduard released its Fw 190A-8 Royal Class Quattro Combo kit earlier this year it also released overtree sets of each of the four versions that were included in the Combo kit. Kit 70111X was the overtree set for the standard Fw 190A-8 with the four wing-mounted Mg 151 cannons two in the wing roots and the second pair outboard. The upper wing halves have the wing bulges for the outer set of cannons in addition to the inboard bulges for the wing root mounted cannons.

As with all of Eduard’s overtree kits, this kit includes just the plastic parts for the Fw 190A-8, there is no photo etch, decals or instructions. The instructions are the easiest item to solve as Eduard posts all of its instructions on its website with the associated kits. I had started by printing the instructions of the Royal Class Quatro kit, but as the weekend edition of the FW-190 A-8 that was released early in my build, I printed those instructions as well and used them for the build. The instructions for the Weekend edition were preferred as they show which of the different side console parts need to installed for the standard A-8, whereas the Royal Class instructions only show which photo etch parts to install. For the A-8 you need to install parts A5 and A6 if you do not have the photo etch set for the A-8. The kit includes nicely molded upper and lower instrument panels that with careful painting really look great.

After the cockpit is painted and assembled, you need to paint the engine and engine bay before trapping the engine and the cockpit between the fuselage halves. Be sure that the engine firewall is firmly seated against the molded locating ring inside the fuselage or the rest of the engine will not sit correctly.

The next area of assembly is the wheel wells and the wings. The detail in the wheel wells is very good and includes not only the wing spar, but also several of the stiffeners. The inner cannon barrels are installed as part of the construction of the landing gear bays, but the outer cannon barrels are separate parts that are simply slid into position at the end of the build. I wish Eduard had done the same thing for the inner barrels as they are delicate parts that stick out right smack in the middle of a convenient place to hold the airplane, so they tend to get broken or bent easily. I would have much preferred being able to just slide these barrels into place after the build was complete.

As I mentioned in my earlier review of the Fw 190A-8 with the early wings, take care in locating the wheel wells and ensure they are not too far forward or they will interfere with the fuselage fit at the wing roots when the wings are offered up. I did better this time, but still had them too far forward and ended up with a little gap at one of the wing roots and the leading edge of the wing. Once the wheel bays have been installed but before the glue sets up, offer the wings up the fuselage and adjust the position of the wheel bays to ensure that they do not interfere with the mating of the wing and fuselage. Otherwise you will either need to carve or sand off some of the top edge of the wheel bays or deal with the seam later. As with any World War 2 fighter where there were a lot of different variants, check your references for the particular aircraft you are modeling as some of them have different arrangements for the smaller panels or openings on the bottom of the wings. You may need to fill in some panel lines or scribe some new ones.

The fit of the top wing halves to the bottom wings halves is excellent and only required a quick sanding with a Flexi-file to eliminate the seam along the leading edge of the wing. The upper right wing half includes a pitot tube almost at the tip of the right wing, however, as the pitot is molded with just the top of the wing, it was more of a semicircle than a tube shape, so I cut it off, drilled a small hole in the same location and installed one of the unused parts on the sprue tree that looks just like a pitot tube (part # 44). Once the wings are dry, the next step is to attach the wings to the fuselage and here it will quickly become obvious whether or not you installed the wheel wells in the right position, as if they are correctly installed, the fit of the wing and fuselage is excellent with just a small seam at the bottom rear edge of the wing insert, if not you will have a gap at the front of the wing root between the exposed cannon barrel and the fuselage that will need careful sanding to prevent breaking the cannon barrel.

Eduard’s engineering is truly outstanding and well thought out as most of the parts that make up the nose of the aircraft are designed to join on actual panel lines and the fit is awesome. The only sanding I had to do was to remove and smooth out the sprue attachment points. As a result the only seams I had to address were on the fuselage aft of the cockpit and under the tail where the kit haves meet, and this did not take much work to remedy.

As rudder and ailerons are all standard parts across Eduard’s Fw 190A-8 kits, they are keyed to be glued in the neutral position, so you will need to do a little bit of work if you want to offset them. As with the other overtree sets, the kit includes two versions of the FW 190 canopy, both the standard hood and the blown hood, and there are two variants of each depending on whether you are modeling the cockpit open or closed. I elected for the blown hood and installed it in the open position.

Once again, the hardest part of the build for me was the landing gear. Eduard’s representation of the landing gear is very accurate but I had a hard time getting the struts to line up with each other and to have the characteristic canted in and forward look of the originals, so take your time and use some slower setting glue to give you time to get everything lined up front to back, side to side and angled in. I left the main gear doors and wheels off until I was comfortable with my alignment and the struts had set up. The main gear doors are a near perfect fit for the openings, which is useful in the painting stage. They can be used to protect the interior color when spraying RLM 76 on the underside, however, when you go to install them, you will need to either narrow the very bottom of the doors, or trim off a small part of the door or they will not fit on the struts correctly. I elected to shorten mine just a bit and I like the way they turned out.

The kit includes two types of tires, one with smooth tread and another with parallel tread, and two different sets of wheel hubs. The instructions did not indicate any preference in which set to use of either, so I elected to use the tires with parallel treads and just picked one of the hub sets arbitrarily. When you mount the wheels, make sure that they are vertical to the ground, not parallel to the landing gear strut as the strut angles inward instead of being vertical.

As this is an overtree set, there are no decals of painting instructions included. Since I did not want to just duplicate the markings provided in the Combo kit, I had to do a bit of searching to find an A-8 with the early wing. Fortunately a club member told me about the Kagero Top Colors publications on the FW 190 and I found a Fw 190A-8 in Part II (#38) where RLM 83 was used in place of RLM 74 on the wings and fuselage top, which added a nice bit of color to the scheme. The Kagero book illustration showed the aircraft in a winter camouflage scheme with white squiggles over the top of the normal paint, but my eyes are not as good as they used to be, so I elected to depict the aircraft in the summer or fall before the winter disruptive scheme was applied. The Kagero book included decals in 1/32, 1/48 and 1/72 scales for the individual markings for each of the aircraft depicted in the book. The decals are printed by Cartograf and were a pleasure to work with. The wing and fuselage crosses and the swastikas on the tail came from an old MicroScale sheet. A coat of Testor’s flat finished things up.

One area where I deviated from the construction sequence shown in the instructions was the gun sight and the instrument shroud. The instructions have you install both the gun sight and the shroud when assembling the cockpit and fuselage. However, as the gun sight is a very tiny, clear part that would quickly disappear once dislodged. It must be installed before the instrument shroud is installed, as part of the gun sight peeks up through the shroud, so I decided to leave both parts off until final assembly.

As with my earlier FW 190A-8 build, I added Eduard’s Superfabric seatbelts for the FW-190 to the seat during final assembly. With the cockpit open, they really stand out and add a great detail

I really enjoyed this kit and look forward to building more of Eduard’s FW 190s. Unfortunately it seems that the overtrees are only available for a limited time as once the single or weekend edition of the kit comes out, the overtrees are discontinued.

I highly recommend Eduard’s Fw 190A-8 as it is a great kit and fun to build. Thank you to Eduard for the review sample and thank you to IPMS-USA for letting me review it.