My first post here, hello all.
I have chosen to start with my review of the Eduard 1/72 Hellfire missiles, as I purchased them baed on a review I read on another site.
That review qwas "opne box" and I can't find any reviews by anyone who has actually attempted to build the missiles.
So here goes.
OK, so I bought a nice 1/72 Apache kit from Academy, and as I really like the fully-laden look, I bought 2 sets of the magnificent looking Eduard kit.
https://www.eduard.com/store/eduard/agm-114-hellfire-1-72.html
“Mmm, tasty resin goodness” I thought.
Then the Eduard missile pack arrived.
I had read some reviews they were all full of ecstatically glowing praise!
But not one had actually you know, BUILT any of the sodding missiles…
This is why open-box reviews are not particularly helpful.
You see, assembling these missiles is IMPOSSIBLE!
Look, I have built many, many teeny tiny models I my life, I am not a fat-fingered bumble-arsed goon.
The kit consists of (well, you’ve can look at the link above) dozens of tiny resin parts, each stuck to their moulding block. The T-Mounts are formed such that you really have to guess exactly what is meant to be kept, and what cut away.
The other parts of the rack mount are covered in flash by design, that you need to cut away.
See, this looks great, but is purely a render:
(1).jpg)
This is the actual contents you get, look at the way parts are mounted...
You can see the way various parts are almost lost on the mounting blocks!
See the forward fins o the PE sheet?
Those are 1mm by 1.5 mm…and attached at 3 points on the PE sheet, two of these points are where it glues onto the missile itself, requiring them to be cleaned off absolutely or you’ll be trying to attach the fin using a vanishingly small contact area…
There is barely enough clearance to get my specially-purchased PE designed mini cutters in to chop them off, then you have the IMPOSSIBLE task of holding such a small part firmly enough to clean up the left over mounting pin…we are talking about something that is literally 1/10 of a mm in width.
Then once you have fiiiiiinally cleaned up ONE, you then have the fun task of gluing it onto the missile…there is so little clearance that when pinched tightly with my smallest, most precise tweezers, I have less than 0.2 mm exposed to apply the super glue, and of course I can’t allow ANY to get anywhere NEAR the tweezers, for the rather obvious reason that if any glue gets that close, it will thereafter be a permanent part OF the tweezers, and decidedly NOT attached to the missile itself.
So after an hour (no I am not kidding) I had attached 4 of the small fins, leaving what I thought would be the easier, larger fins for last.
Well, it seems that whilst there was a tiny slot for the small fins, there isn’t for the rear ones, further, see that tiny slit towards the end of each of the larger fins, well that extends damn near the entire width of the fin, so when you finally detach it from the PE sheet, it will bend at that point, in all sorts of random directions.
I gave up on the missiles and try to assemble one of the mounts…but again, the assembly is so finicky, the attachment points so small, that I cannot imagine any human on this planet who could go start to finish and do a complete set of 8 missiles without stuffing up half of them!!
Look, in get it, someone, somewhere will build an awesome set of missiles...
There are people who can carve the Taj Mahal into the eye of a needle...
But I think far more will end up tossing the lot in the bin in despair!
I have decided that since I used the Apache missiles, I will only mount 8 Hellfires, using their mount, and have ordered some styrene strips in order to cut out my own missile fins!
It seems they jsut took their 1/48 design...and shrunk it!
P.S. Anyone want to buy some Eduard 1/72 Hellfire missiles, I have one unsused set!
I sent this email to Edaurd, who kindly thanked me for the feedback, and offere4d me one more set fo Hellfires, as well as anyhting from the BRassin range.
I really do think that this kit needs a design rethink.