Eduard 1/72 Arado Ar 234B Photoetch for Dragon/Hobby 2000 Kit
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
Overview
Hobby 2000 has been resurrecting some great kits from the likes of Hasegawa, Dragon, and Fujimi, providing modelers with new releases of desirable kits. A great side benefit to this is that the aftermarket community has stepped up to provide details for these older kits, and this is the case with this latest release from Eduard. With this set you get some welcome details for the Dragon/Hobby 2000 1/72 Arado Ar 234B.
The Photoetch
The set comes with two frets of photoetch, one of which is prepainted, with the majority of the parts getting used in the cockpit. This is understandable, given that the cockpit is wrapped with a large clear nose section. For the interior you get new pre-painted sidewall consoles, seat belts, instrument panel, and radio panel bits. You will have to do some trimming of the kit parts to get all of these in place, but nothing too extreme. For those who dread folding photoetch, most of these pieces are used without any folding needed, which makes for an easy application.
Stepping outside of the cockpit, the rest of the details hit all the expected highlights. The landing gear gets the most treatment after the cockpit, with the main gear struts getting new oleo scissors and the main gear bay getting some nice surface details. The nose and main gear doors are completely replaced, including all the hinge detail for the nose gear doors. The wings get petite skids that look much more to-scale than the plastic parts, and continuing that to-scale appareance are the strut assemblies that hold the wing pod pieces.
Conclusion
This is one of the simpler Eduard PE sets out there, yet still provides an excellent level of detail. If you have picked up the new Hobby 2000 release of the Dragon kit, or happen to have one of the original Dragon releases sitting in the closet, this set might be the incentive needed to dig it out and build it up. My thanks to Eduard for the review sample.