Frontier "Dolphin" A319, 1/144th scale

[AAbshier]

I'm not usually a fan of contemporary airliner twinjets, but when Frontier came out with the animal-design tails which included the dolphin, I had to have one in my collection. I was a dolphin trainer years ago, and am still very much a dolphin enthusiast, so I found a Revell A319 and got to work. With one important exception, the kit is mostly stock.

The decal I used, from 8A Decs of Mexico, had window openings in the large "Frontier" titles that came nowhere close to matching the window openings in the Revell kit. Rather than try to fill in the windows (which always leaves "shadows" of the windows when sanded smooth) I removed the window strips completely and replaced them with plastic card. Basically I made a pure freighter out of the A319! Here's how it looked once I got the inlays sanded in:

After that, no worries. Paint is Testor's enamels for the most part. I did use Tamiya XF-26 for the nacelles, which was a virtually exact match for the green parts of the titles.

The laser-printed decals from 8A Decs worked very well for the most part and responded nicely to the Microscale decal system, however, the dolphin design decal leaked some pink after application of Micro-sol. Word to the wise is, keep your Microsol application to the decals to the barest minimum.

To get the door outlines aligned, I cut off the "foot" of the R on this side even with the bottom of the door outline. I later found it had blown off the model! Thankfully I found it, and got it stuck back down in a puddle of Future.

I used Revell decals for the stenciling. Some of them seemed overlarge and too prominent and next time I may dispense with them. Still, I'm happy with how this one came out. Next is the orca, which Frontier flies on an A320. Zvezda, here I come!

[MikeW]

Nice looking airliner here. A 'low cost' carrier, but they have great looking planes. I had heard about replacing the window strip before, but had not seen it done, and a very neat job it looks like you made of it.

Have some 8A Decs in my collection, so thanks for the heads up here. ( He made some interesting looking cockpit and passenger window sets for the A320 that make them look 'alive' so am eager to try them out ) - also on the Zvezda kit for me.

Cheers,

Mike