Wellington Mk. Ia/c Landing Flaps

Published on
Review Author(s)
Scale
1/72
MSRP
$32.95
Product / Stock #
72672
Base Kit
Airfix
Company: Eduard - Website: Visit Site
Provided by: Eduard - Website: Visit Site

IPMS/USA again thanks the Eduard team for sending us more of their prolific output targeted toward improving already great kits. Thanks to Phil and John for obtaining the sets for the team…

This set for is for the Wellington Mk 1/b Flap and is the now-expected as a norm high-end upgrade to the 2018 release of the new-mold Airfix 1/72 Wellington 1a/c. I consider this an EXPERT level of detail, and I failed BUT read on…

I primer painted the unpainted fret, in retrospect, not smart, as the superglue tended to not bond the paint as well as the actual metal. I don’t have a good option here, as the glare and requirement to cover up the brass color will come up and require priming after the build. Sigh. Of course, if I had not kept having the tweezers wick up the superglue, then the problem would not be there. Maybe Gator glue would be a better option, as you can at least clean up a bit with water!

Also, the parts are uber-fragile. Like if you pick up the model with the flaps in place, they can bend irreversibly if el fingers du dinosaur happen to even come close to the finished flap. That’s why there are no totally finished pix in this review, because I buggered this one. (…and yes, I know that that means in Australia and the UK)

Back to the review. This set upgrades the exterior of the Wellington by providing everything needed to drop the flaps for a visual cornucopia of metalwork. This is expressed in the retail price, and also provides an avenue to daunt anyone but the most dedicated to the hobby… I found this set to be the one item, if I had to choose, which would provide pause before dropping the price and flaps. The fact I contemplated getting another set to correct the errors induced by the builder (me) and basically start over because I am a thick fingered bear of a modeler should serve as (1) a warning or (2) incentivize others to do a better job than I did. I removed the appropriate language incorporated here to keep this in a civil discourse. I have not done that, having sacrificed my kit with this set and totally destroying the thing.

Merrily I thought, “Oh well, I messed up the last PE flap set on the Eduard 1/48 Spitfire because I was new to this level of complexity”. I learned otherwise. The large fret of this set has the flap wells with all the flap well and ribs on one sheet, along with the actual flaps. IT ONLY HAS under 50 parts. But it all has to go together.

Also, buy an etch mate ® or other folding tool if you intend to swim in the brass pool. It’s a labourous tool to use, but really necessary for long folds. I could not find mine in the trashheap of a work area I have, and thus it provided impetus to clean up. And I messed up the first part of the build by NOT using one.

The flap well: you need to fold and bend to correct shape to set up for folding the ribs into place. I tried to do it, and x$%&#&$ if I didn’t mess it up. On my set there was no etched line on the backside to guide you, and I ended up with multi creases, not bends. And it would not fit the model. And worst of all, I did not do one other thing:

On the instructions, I was confused by the red (“cut this away”) section for the flap well. You do NOT remove the upper wing area, only bevel the flat trailing edge section on the upper wing to allow the well to fit flush there. I misinterpreted and removed the entire flap area, destroying any recoverable chance of re-scribing, etc. DO NOT REMOVE THE FLAP ARE ABOVE THE FLAP WELL ON THE UPPER WING, Just thin down the trailing edge to allow the set to lie in there!

The rest of the setup is du rigeur. Fold the ribs into place on the recessed slots, glue, let dry, then do it again. For a lot of ribs.

The flaps themselves are simpler, but here’s where the painting prior to assembly also comes in; the slots for the upper structure of the flap surface requires one to put a hole-infested stringer across the top of the flap ribs, into little slots. The paint had filled the slots, and the stringer would not fit in, only bend. This ended the saga with the model being binned when I tried to pick up the model with one flap installed, bent as it was. Yep. Binned. Trashed, thrown out, tossed. I kept the wheels for the next one.

Once again the pictures tell the complete story; as much as I beat myself up here besides being really late on the review, I have to provide the usual high praise and full marks to Eduard for listening to those of us who build and clamor for detail, and providing us opportunity to make more bank runs.…also thanks again to Phil for forwarding and John approving my working these sets. Next time I’ll do better.

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