REVELL

By Ade Bailey

Kit No: 03930

Scale: 1/48

Type: Injection Moulded

Plastic

Manufacturer: Revell GmbH www.revell.de/en

Here’s a confession to start this review – since returning to the hobby four years ago, I have not built a Revell kit. So this was my starting point, my only memory of the German manufacturer is in the very distant past, throwing their aircraft together in hours as a boy. My builds as a functioning adult have more or less been confined to the newer Eastern European and Japanese manufacturers, so it was with great curiosity I set about this new representation of the Luftwaffe’s final incarnation of the FW190 series.

Four sprues of grey plastic and one clear make up the kit, along with two marking options, both from the very last months of the war. It was at this early point in the unboxing process that I discovered something very interesting. Each sprue clearly bore the Eduard logo. This was indeed a rebox of the kit from the Czech Republic’s finest, so what could possibly go wrong?

No surprises as we get straight into the cockpit, with the tub, seat, stick, pedals and firewall/instrument panel. There are two options for the dials, either a nice subtle decal fixed to a flat panel or a raised moulding to paint. I chose the former. Once primed, black-based and given the RLM 66 treatment, the cockpit looked very nice indeed. The kit comes with decals to represent the seatbelts but these are not good and I resorted to my stash of Eduard STEEL belts.