RB Productions P24006 1/24 British/RAF Sutton QS/QL/QP Seat Harness set (Pre-cut Belts w/Photo-Etched Buckles)

This is the late-war seat harness used on all British-made / RAF aircraft from the summer of 1944 until the introduction of ejection seats. Suitable for all late-war and post-war British planes fitted with bubble canopies such as Spitfire, Typhoon, Tempest, Vampire, Venom, Meteor.
No painting needed, just remove the pre-cut belts from the backing paper, glue the detail parts, thread them though the buckles and fit them to your model.
The straps can be set to whatever length you need, just as on the real thing.
The set includes one sheet of photo etched parts with the buckles in stainless steel, one set of pre-cut paper straps and a detailed assembly guide.
The "paper" used on these seatbelts has a high rag content and no lignin (meaning that it is actually a "textile" material), it is acid free and died in the grain. Why is this better than "fabric"? Fabric was considered and tested, then it was abandoned for the following reasons:
- Fabric is hard to cut properly. The edges will often fray. The paper used on these seatbelts will always keep a well-defined edge.
- The paper used on these seatbelts is extremely easy to "set" and stay on the model if you moisten it slightly. Fabric tends to be "springy" and will not settle like real seatbelts.
- Real seatbelts have a very "tight" and "solid" look about them. Seatbelt strap weaves are usually quite fine and the threads tend to be around 1mm on the coarsest materials, but usually they are much finer. In scale 1/32 such coarse thread would be 0.03mm, which is basically one fifth of the thickness of a human hair. There is no way such weave or thread could ever be visible on accurately-scaled straps. The paper used on these seatbelts provides the correct "tight" and "solid" look of the real thing.
- "Fabrics" tends to have a "plain weave" respectively a perpendicular "over and under" pattern. No seatbelt material is ever woven like that - most of them tend to be a "twill pattern". Furthermore, no matter how tightly the fabric is woven, on the fabric material used for "fabric" seatbelts there are fine gaps between the threads and as a result the seatbelt will be slightly translucent. The paper used on these seatbelts provides the correct thickness and opacity of the real thing.