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1/144 Revell A380 Qantas Airways


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Season's Greetings Folks, 

 

Disappointing year really, lots of models started, few completed. This is the Revell 1/144 Airbus A380 with TwoSix Qantas Airways decals. It was built for an Australian colleague after they saw the Air New Zealand B787-9 built for a Kiwi colleague.  

 

May be it was me, but this kit fought all the way and practically refused to be built.  First the wing dihedral was completely off, still cannot understand why, the end result being that the wings drooped so much the engines touched the ground.  I ended up cutting hacking chord wise slots in the upper wing surface (two per side) and manipulating the wing angle section by section until the engine clearance look reasonable. Queue lots of filling and sanding of about a third of each wing's surface area, oh may be half dozen times until I was satisfied.  And then a full rescribe of the upper wing surface.  Things were so bad I contemplated starting again and bought a second kit. Not sure I have the will to endure this again... Enough ranting you get the picture.  Other corrections were the body gear doors, shortening the length of the wing gear legs (so the body gear no longer hang in the breeze), and filling lots of fuselage sink marks.  

 

Paints were Halford's own Plastic White Primer, and Gloss Appliance White, first time used straight from the can due to the sheer size of this model.  Fed up with Xtracolour Airbus Grey I tried the Revell Aqua 50/50 Blend of 371/374, which looks good, but some reason it turned into an unsprayable gloop in my airbrush even with Revell's own thinner.  So I reverted to Xtracrylix ADC Grey for a pale grey, which is too warm a grey, but will have to do. And Xtracrylix Neutral Grey for the corroguard. Plus various Alclad shades for the engines.  Kit decals worked well, even the wing walk markings, but why the spinner spirals are printed yellow is a mystery. 26Decals were incredible as always, exceptionally thin, very tolerant and snuggled down nicely with MicroSet and Sol.

 

The final annoyance was that the damn thing doesn't fit in my photo studio, compromising the photos!

 

Best regards,

 

Darren

 

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Excellent result from a kit that fought you. A freind of ours has been to OZ in one of those and would be impressed.

( By the way, the model looks a little lost photographed against a white background :blink:)

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Thank you all, most kind comments and nice to hear some also appreciate a simple colour scheme without cheatlines ;-) 

 

Paul, the Tamiya photostudio also comes with blue background cloth, which I actually swapped out back to white for this shoot :-/ so may try blue in future, instinctively I prefer white. 

 

Darren

 

PS I spotted I hadn't fixed the wing gear doors and discovered they no longer fit after shortening the wing gear, so it suggests the problem is that the body gear are too short - as these need to made up completely before inserting into wheel bays in each fuselage half that is far from straight forward to fix... 

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That's a beautifully finished A380 Darren. Super smooth paintwork and ouch! some of the sharpest masking I've seen. How did you get the line so straight around the curve of the fuselage?

I'm working on some wide bodies at the moment and your A380 makes me want to build more but where will they I put them?! I hope you've got room to display this in all it's glory!

Cheers,

Ian

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Thank you guys, very kind.  Regarding the super smooth paintwork, there is no secret, it's just tedious patience and Micromesh! Every paint coat gets micromeshed., especially the primer coats - I only use the 4000 grade with the primer coats, then, 4000, 6000 & 8000 on the top coat.  And then my current finish is Alclad Acqua Gloss varnish applied with a wide flat artist's brush, two coats, then a little buffing with a SAMI Miracle Polisher, then decals and then a final varnish coat.  Masking is trial and error - i eyeballed the masking line, also tried using a ruler - the line should extend from the fin leading edge.  Looking at the windows, it's half a window out. ;-) And then a narrow strip 2-3mm wide of Tamiya tape burnished down with the side of a cocktail stick.  

 

Darren

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11 hours ago, Turbofan said:

That's a beautifully finished A380 Darren. Super smooth paintwork and ouch! some of the sharpest masking I've seen. How did you get the line so straight around the curve of the fuselage?

I'm working on some wide bodies at the moment and your A380 makes me want to build more but where will they I put them?! I hope you've got room to display this in all it's glory!

Cheers,

Ian

 

Good question, well asked! I've got a QANTAS 737 ddcal sheet I'd love to use, but the colour demarcation is putting me off. I've tried fine masking tape and drawing lightly on the fuselage but I just can't seem to get the lines right. If I can crack that a QF A380 will be next.

 

2 hours ago, Darren Rhodes said:

Thank you guys, very kind.  Regarding the super smooth paintwork, there is no secret, it's just tedious patience and Micromesh! Every paint coat gets micromeshed., especially the primer coats - I only use the 4000 grade with the primer coats, then, 4000, 6000 & 8000 on the top coat.  And then my current finish is Alclad Acqua Gloss varnish applied with a wide flat artist's brush, two coats, then a little buffing with a SAMI Miracle Polisher, then decals and then a final varnish coat.  Masking is trial and error - i eyeballed the masking line, also tried using a ruler - the line should extend from the fin leading edge.  Looking at the windows, it's half a window out. ;-) And then a narrow strip 2-3mm wide of Tamiya tape burnished down with the side of a cocktail stick.  

 

Darren

 

Thanks for the answer, sadly not the miracle answer I hoped for!!

 

Jeff 

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Sorry Jeff!

 

I used to fear 'trying again' in case I made things worse, but one can always micromesh a demarcation back and try again. I was lucky first time on the A380, however, the Air New Zealand black/white colour took three attempts - on the third attempt I tried Tamiya's new flexible white masking tape, it's great for making curves, but using for the engine inlet liner demarcation it ripped the base Alclad coat straight off - trial and error, there is no miracle. 

 

Darren

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That's right!!. I recall masking my Dreamliner to paint the United colours. The left side waving demarcation was so easy as I did it in a couple of attempts but the right side...3 hours later and half a mile of Tamiya tape gone, I finally got both sides to look similar (ish). There really is no substitute for trial and error and a bit of patience. 

 

Jeff 

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