Avia B.534 Detail Set

Eduard BIG SIN, 1/72 scale

Reviewed by Mark Davies

Eduard’s 1/72 scale Storm Shadow missiles are available online from Squadron.com

The detail set reviewed here is intended for Eduard’s Profipack and Weekend Edition B.534 III & IV Serie kits (and over-trees for that matter). I took a “first look” at the Weekend Edition of the B.534 IV Serie kit here on HyperScale in June this year.

For many Eduard is a brand name synonymous with superb quality, and this is certainly the case with the review items. The set consists of three items normally available separately as:

• 672066 – Avia B.534 Wheels & Spats

• 672069 – Avia B.534 Bombs & Racks

• 72602 – Avia B.534 Wires & Stretchers

Purchasing these three sets combined in the BIG SIN box saves 27% on the sum of the three items’ individual prices.

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Of the three sets, only the wires & stretchers set is in its normal combined bag and card packaging. The resin parts come packed in a small plastic bag, as is the paint mask for the wheels & spats, with the instructions for these items being loose in the box. All three sets are over-protected in bubble-wrap sufficient to fill the BIG SIN box.

The clear instructions for each item are also downloadable in as PDF’s from Eduard’s website. To view these please click on the linked part-numbers provided below:

• 672066 – Avia B.534 Wheels & Spats

• 672069 – Avia B.534 Bombs & Racks

• 72602 – Avia B.534 Wires & Stretchers

A picture is worth a thousand words, and this adage certainly applies to this “first look”. The Eduard’s CAD illustrations, my images of the actual items, and the downloadable instructions should provide readers with almost all they need to about the contents and their intended placement. However, some additional commentary still seems warranted.

The kit’s wheels and spats are extremely good, with even tyre logos being moulded in styrene. However, the resin wheels and spats manage to be better still because of the additional detail and refinement resin casting can impart to the spats in particular.

The six resin bombs with integral racks are a clear improvement on the kit items due to the limitations of injection moulding.

The PE rigging is predictably flat and so resembles the streamlined RAF-wire type of rigging used on the original. Of interest is the way the flying wires are fitted to the airframe, which may go some way to alleviating the curse of PE rigging; namely, the difficulty with tensioning it. Each flying and landing wire, whether single or paired, is anchored at one end by separate tensioners. These tiny PE fixings must be inserted into holes the modeller drills in accordance with the two pages of detailed rigging instructions. One end of the flying or landing wire is anchored in a hole, and the other end is fed through a slot in the fixing and bent back on itself, as shown below:   

I should think that despite this somewhat innovative approach many would avoid the PE rigging simply because it is so fiddly. This aside, I also remain to be convinced that it offers a superior result to other rigging methods that enable tension to be easily applied (be they elastic-thread, tensioned monofilament, stretched-sprue etc). I also feel that round-section rigging is quite acceptable in 1/72 scale, despite flattened section PE being theoretically more accurate. I leave it to reader to judge, but even in the Eduard image below of a very nicely made company model, the PE rigging it is slightly bowed in a couple of places:

It is not my intention to nit-pick over a very well made model, or to criticise Eduard; I just want to illustrate the challenge I think the PE option will present.

All three of these detail sets are of excellent quality and stand to enhance Eduard’s new-tool Avia B.534 kits. I must confess to some doubts about the PE rigging, which will, I am sure be very tricky to fit, and possibly less effective overall when compared with more traditional methods.

I therefore unconditionally recommend the resin wheels & spat and bombs & racks, and hope the relatively heavy discounting may encourage some braver readers to take the plunge and have a go at the PE rigging.

Thanks to Eduard for the samples and images.

Review Text & Black Background Images Copyright © 2015 by Mark Davies
Page Created 31 November, 2015
Last updated 1 December, 2015

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