The original MPM Fulmar features a fair amount of interior detail, but one surprise was that kit doesn't include any resin or etched parts - and reference to 4 Publications' book on the aircraft reveals that quite a lot of the injection-moulded cockpit detail is simplified or missing altogether. Cue Eduard, with a very nice 2-fret etched set that replaces a lot of the rather clumsy moulded items and fills in most of the gaps. Some idea of the level of cockpit detail offered here comes from the fact, that between them, the frets contain no less than 121 new parts.

The first fret is both self-adhesive and pre-painted and, as you might expect, concentrates on three main areas:

1. A full seat harness for both the pilot and observer - a real blessing, as MPM didn't include any seatbelts. As usual, the pre-painting is excellent, with a level of detail in the stitching that would be impossible to reproduce any other way.

2. New instrument panels and radio and electronics consoles. These are mostly multi-layer affairs to allow recessed instrument faces. Again, the detail is quite extraordinary and they should look superb with a drop of Klear/Future in the bezels.

3. There are quite a number of tiny knobs and levers - some of which must be folded to produce the required thickness. This exposes the one weakness of parts like these - the painting is only on one side, so folding the parts reveals the bare edges. Still, a quick touch-up is all that's required to fix that.

The second fret includes new seats , radio boxes for the rear compartment (ready for the fascias on the pre-painted fret), new rudder pedals, compass holders, plus plenty of smaller details like brackets that were little more than moulded bumps in the MPM cockpit. There's a degree of folding required for these parts, but the set isn't overly complex for anyone with some experience of working with photo-etched details.

I said this set fills most of the gaps in the original kit, so what's still missing? Well, there are the odd, diagonal braces around the pilot's seat, which couldn't be reproduced accurately as photo-etched items - they'd be far too 2-D. Photos in the 4 book also reveal quite a lot of cables and pipework. The latter is often included in Eduard's etched sets like this, so it's noticeable by its absence here. To be honest though, when it is included, it often comes in for criticism from some quarters as looking too flat to be realistic, so its omission won't worry most superdetailers.

Conclusion

Overall this is an excellent detail set that adds a lot to MPM's Fulmar. It concentrates on what the medium is best suited for and the pre-painted items are second-to-none, offering a level of details that few of us could ever hope to match. It's not a suitable set for total beginners, but the Fulmar is a semi-short run kit anyway so, if you've got the skill to build the model, you should have no problems coping with Eduard's additional details. Recommended.

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