Is there a kit review / comparison of the two Edu / Hase on Aeroscale? If not it sounds like Gaston is the man to write and detail these issues in a review.

Hi Stephen I think I'd count Steffen into the equation too. I'd love to see a to see a definitive and objective 1:48 Fw 190A kit comparison on Aeroscale (I'd also include the Tamiya kits, for all their well documented faults, on account of their popularity) - but I'm not sure I'd wish the task on anyone! It'd be a big job to do thoroughly and anyone brave enough to undertake it would (almost inevitably) come in for plenty of flak from the "rivet counters" and proponents of the kits involved. But, it'd be awesome if someone's up for it... All the best Rowan

I don't know what would be required to make a suitable comparative article in terms of images, as my current lack of the Eduard kit or of a digital camera is probably a serious impediment... I can provide the following reliable info however: I have been astonished to see that for over two years now, since the release of Hasegawa's A-5 with the red car, there has been no build review of this kit or of any of the subsequent 1/48th A-6/8 variants that Hasegawa has released... The only thing reviewed and built I have seen in that entire series was the BMW automobile... I have scoured the internet and all the major magazines for two years now and, except for the box sides and instructions, I have yet to even see a photo of one built... I cannot remember, in over ten years of modeling, of such an ostracisation of a major new release. I think this is due to the barely pre-emptive Eduard releases, and also, perhaps, to the later Hasegawa 1/48th A-5/6/8 series being confused, quality/accuracy wise, with Hasegawa's 1/48th A-3/A-4 releases of just a year previously. They are not of the same accuracy and quality at all, and the clear parts of the later 5/6/8 series, in particular, are the first accurate 190 clear parts ever done in any scale... They SHOULD be the same as the clear parts in their A-3/4s, but they most definitely are not! Peter Kormos measured for me the windscreen of an actual relic, and this came down in 1/48th scale at 5.1mm wide by 10mm long; an exact match to the later A-5/6/8 Hasegawa 1/48th series; the first and only such match in all scales... Even Hasegawa's 1/32 scale windshield is wider, as is their 1/48th A-3/4s, being all about one scale inch wider (as is, perhaps by a touch less, the 1/48th Dragon). 1/48th Tamiya and Eduard are both over a full 2 scale inches wider at 6.2 mm: Well over 50 scale mm! This is a 20% error on a simple rectangle, one that throws off the entire canopy shape... I think the Eduard simply stole the glutted limelight by being a few weeks early (hundreds of Eduard build reviews vs ZERO for Hasegawa, in the SAME two-year release period...) and being loaded with gimmicky open panel details that could be seen as ground-breaking, but in fact the real innovation was in new major accuracy errors no other kit had previously considered... A true retrograde kit in almost every way... It really is a lot less accurate than even the old flawed Tamiya kit which, with its big cowling "step", and its far too upright windshield (also 1mm too wide and 2mm+ too short), is surprisingly difficult to correct... The Dragon 190A was probably the best of the old 190As, but I never liked it because, despite good overall dimensions, its overall cowling diameter/lenght was visibly undersized, being about 1/50-1/52 scale. The Tamiya cowling is about 2mm short in chord, and the armoured cowl ring needs terribly to be blended in with it, but surprisingly, this Tamiya armoured cowl ring fits better to the Hasegawa cowl than the Hasegawa's own cowl ring(!), and is a major improvement in fit and appearance, with a correct nearly flush stepped join appearance... Even the location tab works perfectly... Similarly, the narrow style Tamiya prop is an essential substitute for any Hasegawa 190A version so equipped. I have not seen the Hasegawa broad blade prop interpretation yet, but Hasegawa props are often poor... Overlaying one-eyed to several photos, Hasegawa's 1/48th A-5/6/8 series is the first ever "Anton" serie with an entirely correct overall cowl diameter and lenght. Meanwhile, the Eduard cowl innovates with a never before seen extra-broad laterally and razor-thin-lipped cowl ring, and, worse still, a complete lack of the upper cowl half "taper", something NO previous modern 190 kit had ever missed... The Eduard 190A cowl is essentially a tube with paralell sides all around, and this it definitely should not be... With the cowl absent and the clear parts modified, replaced or partly gone, the Eduard's usefulness improves, especially if you must have the wingroot gun bays open. Much as I don't like this kit, I would actually choose it for specialized diorama purposes, such as crashed displays, heavy maintenace etc... Given the wide availability of the Hasegawa A-5/6/8 series, choosing the Eduard for a ready-to-fly display is simply incredible to me. Even more incredible is the Eduard's media dominance. I hope I don't sound too unpleasant saying this... Gaston. P.S. As I said above, be wary on the Hasegawa 1/48th A-5/6/8 kit series of a tendency of the cowl to sit nose-up, as it caused me a LOT of assembly problems, since no build reviews existed to make me aware of this.... Despite the small contact points, do not use cyano glue until you are sure of the cowl's pitch angle by seriously trimming all the complicated semi-circle contact points at the bottom... If you know of one with an old sticker price in your LHS, buy it now as, like all of Hasegawa and much of Trumpeteer, it is in the process of nearly doubling in price! (At least in North America) G.

LOL

By the way, somewhere on this site you will find pics of the the Jean-Luc build review of the Hasegawa A-5 with BMW. Not sure where it is though. Andrew

Thanks for your contribution, Gaston! I agree on the Eduard cowl .. they maybe measured the FlugWerk FW190A-8N which has this tubular oversize look. ... As for the Priller boxing: guilty for my kit .. but I have not finished one Eduard kit yet while I did 2 or 3 Hasgawas in the meantime (A-3/4) and some Tamiyas too . Still IIRC Jean-Luc built his box pretty fast and posted it here https://aeroscale.kitmaker.net//features/1720 .. even though the title suggests only the car was built (I have built Prillers Fw 190A-3 years ago, so I am looking for another c&m for my kit) Again: there is no perfect kit of any subject and IMO there never will be one. And again I will also repeat my statement about the A-6 ... it is none so one maybe should not add this kit to the "best ever" statement. As for the Hasegawa price increase .. it is here in Germany already. I bought the A-6 for 24 Euro some time ago (which was discounted, but this boxing is still about 30 Euro) .. the new Fw 190 F-8 I got for review was priced 44 Euro from the importer/distributor! ... as was the Tiffi all the best Steffen

I see I missed one build review... Sorry! I doubt there are many others... None that I know of on all of Hyperscale, MM, ARC ect... But I have only known about Aeroscale recently, and was at the time directed to an in-box review of the Hasegawa A-8. This is a beautiful build of the A-5! So we have one build review vs hundreds for the Eduard... None of my available modeling publications ever did a build review... I count at least a dozen or more for the Eduard... It should be noted that this newer Hasegawa 1:48th 190A late war series is probably the most accurate kit of a German WWII fighter offered in mainstream injection plastic (maybe the Dragon 1/32 Me-110C excepted, and also excepting the Tamiya He-219 which is unknown to me)... As far as I am aware, the closest competition in 1:48th would be the Tamiya Me-262, but this kit has no deployed leading edge slats. These slats were always deployed by gravity on the ground; if not they were defective and the aircraft was considered unflyable... The Pro-modeler Me-410 is probably the next best thing, but has undersized spinners. The radial engined Dragon Ju-88s are good but very rare. The much more common Jumo engine versions have a really dodgy prop-spinner appearance. All 1/48th Me 110s have canopies that bear litttle resemblance to the real thing: Compare the depth of the canopy to that of the 1/32 scale Dragon Me-110C, which is correct.... There is actually very little resemblance at all of the Dragon with any of them, including with the Eduard kit... With the exception of the Otaki G-6 and the Revell G-10, which have serious problems, there is no 1/48th Me-109 kit with the correct full fuselage depth of 51 inches, as I measured from two aircrafts, an F in Ottawa and an E in Washington state. Most of the others, including the only kit with a close to accurate canopy, the Hasegawa F-G series, scale out at 49 inches... (I don"t know about the UM kit, but the canopy in sprue photos apparently shows the typical flaw of being far too narrow: The Hasegawa canopy is unfortunately 1" too wide at the top and 2" too wide at the bottom, but can be corrected fairly easily) Two inches of fuselage depth is 1mm of missing vertical 1:48th depth, equivalent to a 1/48th 109 model being 7 mm too long, or about 14 scale inches... The shallow appearance is worsened by the depth of the tail extremity being correct in most kits, including the Hasegawa. All of these problems are very obvious, and are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to correct... (Even the leading edge slats of the 262 are best scratchbuilt in plastic, as resin AM slats requires cyano glue wich makes very good alignment unlikely) The statement that there is no perfect kit doesn"t really ring true with the later Hasegawa 190As. Aside from the prop there is nothing really noticeable besides the nose-up tendency. Assembly problems are another matter, but are not prohibitive in this case. While it is true that most British and US fighters have equally serious problems, the notion that we are awash in good German fighter kits is simply an assumption. For example, Eduard"s 1:48th I-16 is far better than almost all of them, and is one of the better 1:48th kits available. Note I don"t say this as an Eduard fan... Nichimo"s 1:48th Ki-43 is over thirty years old, as is Monogram"s 1:48th B-26B. Accuracy-wise, neither of them has even been approached since, even in their general type or nationality category... That"s close enough to perfection for me... Gaston.

Hi Gaston this is leading a bit faar from the original topic of the thread. So I leave this discussion after this post. I do agree on some of your statements but I do not on others. What a perfect model is, depends pretty much on what you (personally) expect, so it is difficult to discuss. "Alles Geschmackssache sagte der Affe und biss in die Seife ...." ... sorry I cannot translate it, and I do not know the proper English term, but it goes in the direction of suum cuique. all the best Steffen

Hi again Steffen's right that the thread's strayed way off topic, but there are some fascinating ideas to discuss elsewhere. Meanwhile, it's got me dreaming of building the old B-26 again - always one of my favourite kits! But that's for another time, another thread! All the best Rowan