HGW sets rest on the two things that made this Czech firm known worldwide: seatbelts printed on microtextile, and wet transfers. Packages in the Basic Line and Super Detail series combine those technologies for one specific aircraft kit, in scales from 1:72 up to the enormous 1:24. Unlike an etched fret, fabric drapes over the edge of a seat and falls into a natural slack curve on its own.
Below we explain how the technologies work and what to check before pairing a set with the kit on your bench.
Most manufacturers render seat harness as photo-etched metal, which is admirably thin but stays rigid and flat. HGW prints the webbing on microtextile instead: the strap behaves like cloth, bends over the seat frame and produces its own slack without being coaxed. The firm's second speciality is wet transfers, extremely thin markings carried without a backing film, which merge into the surface once applied and leave no visible decal edge to hide under varnish. Sets come in graded series, from the straightforward Basic Line to richer Super Detail packages for named kits such as the Fokker D.VII in 1:32.
As with any bundled upgrade, the set is tied to one set of mouldings: the title names the aircraft and usually the kit maker as well, for example an F6F-5 Hellcat with the manufacturer in brackets. Textile belts transfer between kits more easily than etch does, but it is still worth staying with the stated application.
Fabric belts show wherever the cockpit is open to view. The large formats are where they look best, so start from the choice of 1:32 aircraft kits, though the firm also cuts belts for quarter and seventy-second scale, where the printed buckle detail does work no brush could.
Assembling a textile belt means cutting the part out, threading it through the buckles and fixing it with a drop of cyanoacrylate. It is an evening's work rather than a five-minute job, and the result is about as good as a cockpit interior gets.
Belts and markings bought separately rather than bundled are listed under aircraft fabric seatbelts and aircraft wet transfers. For packages from every brand side by side, see aircraft upgrade sets.
