Eduard Models

Recently I have been busy building plastic models almost as fast as I can get the cement to dry on the parts. Wheather it's just time on my hands or a renewed interest in plastic kits I cannot say; suffice to add I've enjoyed every minute of the time I have spent.
Perhaps it's the fact that I have discovered the Eduard line of kits from the Czech Republic. Eduard makes a number of kits in all scales from 1/144 to 1/32.  They maintain a web site, blog and can be found on Facebook.  Perhaps their gain to fame are the photo etch parts they produce for a number of other manufactures kits. The most recent being a number of photo etch parts for Tamiya's 1/32 scale P-51 Mustang.
On this blog, I would like to show a few photos of two Eduard Russian airplanes I've completed in the past few weeks. Each model is a 1/48 scale "Weekend Edition".

Usually Eduard produces several different versions of the same model. The Limited Edition, ProfiPack, Combo and Weekend.  The weekend edition has the same plastic trees as does each other version, only different options are less.  As an example a Limited Edition may have several photo etch parts, maybe some epoxy parts, canopy masks, several different marking sets and something special for the collector.  The ProfiPack will be the same, but no special something for the collector and different markings. The Combo may be two or three different versions of the same aircraft with all the photo etch, and different markings.  The last and least expensive version is the Weekend version.  Same plastic parts, no photo etch, no canopy mask, one or two different markings and in some cases a plain black and white instruction pages while the box contains the color art of the model inside.
As for recommending the Eduard kits, I place them on an equal or better level as the Hasegawa and Tamiya kits. As we know today, Eduard sometimes uses dies from other manufactures as does Tamiya and several other companies.  Only real problem I have encountered is the availability to get them from U.S. distributors. Both Stevens and MND never seem to have the models in stock.  I have ordered several different models in the past few months and only was able to get one out of six different models ordered.  So I have turned to Ebay as a source.
If you have not built an Eduard kit, please give them a try, I'm sure you will find them well worth the money spent.  Here is the web address.   http://www.eduard.com/store/index.php?cur=2&