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Peach Airlines Airbus A320, Hasegawa 1:200


richellis

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Airbus A320, Peach Airlines

1:200 Injection Moulded airliner from Hasegawa

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The Airbus A320 first flew in 1987, and was designed and built by the European aircraft company Airbus. Airbus is a consortium of European aircraft manufacturing companies that came together to compete with the big American airliner builders like Boeing.

The A320 is a narrow body short to medium range airliner and was the first airliner to use fly by wire controls and a side stick, think computer joy stick, over a traditional Yoke control, the A320 family is available with a choice of two engines, the CFM56 or the IAE V2500. The A320 aircraft has been shrunk in length to produce a smaller A318 and A319 models, and lengthened to produce a bigger A321. Some detailed photos of the Airbus A320 can be seen here to help with your builds.

Various kits have been made of the A320 family, with Revell doing them all in 1:144 and Hasegawa have produced some in 1:200. Hasegawa have recently added a new version to the line up with a Peach A320.

Peach, not to be confused with a short lived UK operator, is biased in Japan at Kansai International Airport and was formed in 2011. Peach is a low cost airline and it has an all A320 fleet of 7 aircraft with a further 10 on order. They serve both domestic Japanese routes along with destinations in Hong Kong, South Korea and Taiwan.

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The fuselage comes in the usual 2 halves and has some engraved detail in the surface, that looks fine and to scale. The various antennas and lumps moulded into the parts, a bulkhead is on another sprue and a metal bolt is included that screws in to form the nose weight. You will need to decide if you want to use the included stand or put the aircraft on its wheels before closing the fuselage as a section will need cutting out and a plug inserting for the stand at this point. The fuselage is moulded in white and there are no clear parts in the kit, the windows are decals on the decal sheet.

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The stand is cast in a clear Smokey plastic and also shown is the bolt for the nose weight.

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The wings and tail stabs come on a light grey moulded sprue, they have engraved flap and slat detail on the surface. The lower inner wing is a separate part with the join falling under the engine pylon so the join will be less visible, and there is some basic detail in the main gear bays in the wings. The wings have a nice shape with thin trailing edges. The flap tracks will need gluing on and they are on the sprue with the engine parts.

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The engine cases are in 2 halves each with a front and rear fans to add to detail the CFM engines. The fans have nice moulded detail that will look great with some paint and a wash over the blades

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The final sprue contains the undercarriage, and despite its small size the parts are well detailed. The winglets will need a moulding pip removing carefully as the parts are small and delicate, but the size and shape looks good to my eye. Finally you get the bulkhead that need gluing inside the fuselage and you can see the hole for the bolt. The bolt screws in nicely without needing force and it don’t deform the part. I would use a spot of superglue to hold it securely in place.

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The decals come on a nice sheet and included enough numbers to reproduce any of the aircraft in the Peach fleet. The colours look good against photos I’ve seen on the internet. You will need to mix paints to match the decals, and detail on the ratios is given for paints in the Hobby Colour or Mr Colour paint ranges. You will need to paint the fuselage in white first then carefully mask off for the purple paint work. If you can copy and enlarge the instruction by 80% that will give you a guide for the complex curves. Various stencils are included on the decal sheet along with the aircrafts windows and doors.

Conclusion

This is a nice kit that looks an accurate shape. The livery is unusual and the two tone purple will make a colourful addition to the cabinet.

Review sample courtesy of logo.jpg UK distributors for logo.jpg

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