Eduard 1/48 SSW D.III Weekend Edition Photo Etch
By Chris Cowx
Eduard has become one of the grand masters of taking full advantage of any product they produce. Packaging different levels of detail, markings, etc. has been a staple for years with them and frankly, they are darn good at it!
The Siemens-Schuckert SSW D.III was Eduard's very first kit, that they released back in the 90's . It was a nice effort for a limited run kit in it's day and can still be built into a decent model. However, Eduard has released a completely new tooled version. This kit shows how far Eduard has come in the past 20 years or so, and it's a state of the art product that can hold its head high in any company. Eduard has a general policy of releasing various levels of difficulty and detail, so they have released both a "Weekend Edition" and the "Profipack" version. The primary difference is the number of decal options and the inclusion of photo-etch detail parts. To further expand the options available to the modeler, the photo-etch parts are available separately, if one wishes to upgrade the Weekend Edition to essentially "Profipack" standards.
So, what does the p/e set include? In taking a look at it, some of the parts included were a surprise and some were exactly what we have been taught to expect from Eduard. I was surprised at the sparseness of cockpit parts, usually a staple of Eduard sets. There is a colored seat back and seat belts for the cockpit, and not much else. I personally like colour p/e for the stitching on the seat belts, but I am less enamoured of the wood grain for the seat back. I will be paint it to match the other wood in the interior. The rest of the cockpit is otherwise served quite well in the plastic, with a few decals. But the plastic parts are so good, and there is no instrument panel anyway, so what you get is fine.
The rest of the set is quite good for the airframe. Again, since the plastic is excellent, there is no need to go crazy on every detail. What they do cover is a flare rack, some flight control actuating rods, gun cooling jackets, gun sights and a large number of turnbuckles. These items do an excellent job of improving the airframe in ways that are obvious, without getting having many tiny pieces that are more trouble than they are worth. I particularly liked the turnbuckles and the gun jackets and sights.
This set is an excellent, well thought out addition to the kit. It improves it in many ways, particularly in the areas of rigging, guns and seat belts. These areas tend to get looked at first on a WWI model. While the kit done in only plastic will get looks, the added detail will make a show stopper. I recommend this kit and I would like to thank Eduard for the review sample.