Scale Plastic & Rail

1/72 PSP colour from Eduard

1/72 PSP colour
Eduard
Catalogue # 7720
Available from Eduard and other good hobby retailers for Euro 7.45

This one surely is the Eduard aftermarket set with the least number of parts: ONE! For this base plate is very concise Eduard of course doesn´t provide an assembly manual with it. IF they had done so it maybe would have shown only three steps:

• Open the resealable clear plastic bag and take the base plate out
• Put base plate onto your table or shelf
• Put a model (aircraft, etc., not provided with this set) on it

Finished!

PSP is an abbreviation for "pierced steel plank". Originally known as the Marston mat" it has been tested in 1941 by the U.S. Army during manoeuvres in the vicinity of a town called Marston.

Made of steel planks about 3 metres long and 0.38 metres wide that could be joined by hand and simple tools. Weighing 29 kilograms each about 11 square metres could be assembled per man hour.

(Source: http://www.calumetindustries.com)

These easy to fabricate steel plates enabled the allied forces to establish runways and other hard surfaces in no time to get their troops ashore and their aircraft into action, being independent of airfields left behind by the enemy.

I found this one on YouTube that shows how it worked (and still does today):

As mentioned earlier this base plate comes in a clear zip-lock bag with only a small adhesive label on it, mentioning the scale, the article number and designation.

The base plate is printed in colour on its upper surface, with the sides of it left unpainted in the white plastic it has been injection moulded in. This sides show some coloured staining, maybe some residue from the printing process of the top side, I guess. One could embed this plate in a diorama so the side walls will not be visible or just paint them over.

The upper surface is embossed with the structure of staggered PSP plates, just as the real ones would have been staggered when placing on the ground. My issue with this coloured PSP plate is the mixture of colours printed on it. We have a real rainbow of colours on it, ranging from light grey over different hues of blue to yellow and even some hues of orange. I tried my best to reproduce these colours on the first picture above.

I have no clue what surface has such colours in real life. To me it looks like someone had a very strange day choosing this mix of colours...
I cannot help but with these rainbow colours on the PSP structure there is the urgent need to do the paint job yourself! At least the "canvas" is not expensive here. So, I would suggest browsing the web for some pictures of those PSP plates in use since WWII and get this base plate a more realistic colouring.

So what do we think?
Doing such simple bases for the modeller to place his model on is a good idea and should be continued with other structures and in other scales. Eduard, in my opinion, should review the colouring of this one for it is beautiful gaudy but unrealistic and therefore useless without being repainted by the modeller.

I have to excuse for showing a 1/48 scale kit of my Ryan on this 1/72 scale base plate but I hope you get the picture of the well-done structure and diorama potential of this one-piece kit from Eduard.

Recommended if repainted by yourself

My sincere thanks to Eduard for this review sample! To purchase this directly, click THIS link.

Thomas Mayer