Eduard 1/48 Super Fabric Seatbelts
By Chris Cowx
Up for review today is one of Eduard's never ending updates of an old idea. In this case it is the relatively new "Super Fabric" seat belts. For review I have item numbers 49081, 49084 and 49086. These are the Luftwaffe, Imperial Navy and United States Navy (green) seat belts, respectively. In fact, I got the USN white belts in place of the Luftwaffe version in the package, but still, very nice!
In looking them over, they are quite nice and should go a long way toward being able to be realistically draped. The obvious strong point of a fabric belt vs a p/e one is that it will easily and realistically drape. They have a fabric texture and a nice level of sheen that looks quite realistic. There is some effort made at putting some sort of raised texture onto the buckles, along with a metallic silver paint. Stitching, grommets and holes are printed onto the fabric and look good. Overall these will look great and for very minimal effort will improve a cockpit quite effectively. I would consider them perfect for a simple but very effective upgrade to the current crop of injection molded kits, such as Hasegawa's recent Japanese releases or Tamiya's P-47 kits. A well positioned instrument panel decal and a set of these belts and the effect would be gorgeous!
A few nitpicks, most of which fall squarely into the AMS (Advanced Modeler's Syndrome) sufferer category. The first, of course, is the striking resemblance of the Luftwaffe belts to USN white seat belts! Obviously a packaging error and the first I have ever seen in hundreds of Eduard products I have bought over two decades. My most serious issue was with the IJN (Imperial Japanese Navy) belts. They seemed quite distinctly over size, and when compared to my old school Eduard P/E they were about 50% wider. The USN (United States Navy) belts seemed to be much more in scale, making me almost wonder if there was not a mistake and that the IJN should be labeled 1/32nd scale? Other minor issues are a lack of 3 dimensionality, which is a general weakness of photo etch and a bit of fabric texture taking away from the effect of the metal buckles. Again, bear in mind, most modelers will not find the minor nitpicks mentioned above offensive and will be quite content to use them.
My overall assessment is that these are almost like the Zoom sets in Eduard's lineup: they provide excellent bang for the buck, look great, and are an excellent enhancement to a decent kit. 90% of modelers will be perfectly happy with them. If you count yourself in the remaining 10%, going whole hog on a kit with aftermarket or extensive scratch building, I think you would be happier going to a bit of extra work, and using old school photo etch or photo etched hardware with separate tape or fabric belts. Which by the way, the generous leftovers around the border would be excellent with some p/e or home made hardware, as an added bonus! I recommend these sets and I would like to thank Eduard for providing the review samples.