This set is another of Eduard’s new “Steel” seatbelt line. The set is advertised as being for World War II Luftwaffe fighters, but the fret is etched “Bf 109” and “Fw 190”, so it appears the set is intended for just these two aircraft. However, in looking at photographs of belts in other Luftwaffe fighters, I think they could be used for other aircraft as well.

The set includes four sets of lap-belts and shoulder harnesses, two for the Bf 109 and two for the FW 190. In looking at the belts closely, about the only difference I can see is the upper attachment point for the shoulder harnesses. As I did not have either a Bf 109 or a Fw 190 underway, I installed the Bf 109 set in a Hasegawa Me 262 and the Fw 190 in a Ta 152H that have been in the bench queens pile for a while.

Each lap-belt has two parts, the belt itself and the leather pad that is fitted under the buckle/insert. These were attached to each other with superglue and then I glued the lap-belts to the sides of each seat. Once the glue was dry, I used fine tweezers and a flat toothpick to shape each lap-belt the way I wanted, and then they were superglued in place. I installed the lap-belts before I installed the seat in the cockpit to ensure I had full access to the sides of the seat and it was much easier to shape the belts with the seat outside of the cockpit.

Next I glued the seats into their respective cockpits and cut out the shoulder harnesses. The instructions show that the upper attachment points are almost immediately behind the upper part of the seat, which looks odd to me as the shoulder straps are pretty long and tend to drape over pretty much all of the seat when installed like this. However, I was not able to find any photographs that contradicted the instructions, so I followed them.

This set is a great set and really dresses up the kit seats and adds a lot to each of the cockpits. I have become a big fan of the Steel seatbelts sets and look forward to seeing which new ones Eduard will be releasing next! Highly recommended.

Thank you to Eduard for the review sample and to IPMS-USA for letting me review it.