Jump to content

British Midland colours from Halfords?


Recommended Posts

Has anyone used Halfords paint to match the later British Midland blue and grey (not the scheme in the Revell A319 kit) as in this example?  I know Xtracolor used to make the colours as X336 and X337 but they are no longer listed.

 

Any suggestions gratefully received

 

Dave G

Link to comment
Share on other sites

41 minutes ago, theplasticsurgeon said:

I did a review on Modeling Madness of an airliner in that scheme.  I used X336 and Humbrol 27. I'll post link when ive got something better than my rubbish phone.

Thanks for this.  The problem is that X336 has been discontinued and the one ancient tinlet in my stash has deteriorated beyond usability.  Being lazy I'm looking for a ready made substitute for X336, preferably from Halfords.  The grey is less of a problem because I still have a useable tinlet of X337 although I'd prefer to do the whole model in the same kind of paint.  If all else fails I'll brew my own blue and use the Xtracolor grey.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Dave,

 

You could use Dark Sea Grey for the lower colour, it's pretty close to the original shade. I have a full set of paint chips for the 1996 colours I managed to wangle from our paint shop at EMA. I plan to pop into the local Halfords sometime this week for some Appliance White. I'll take the chips and see if I can find a match for the blue.

 

Incidentally it's not just us modellers that have trouble sometimes matching paint. Not too long after it entered service (early Summer 1999, if I remember correctly) G-MIDC suffered a collision with a set of airstairs damaging the forward fuselage just below and in front of the L1 (left hand) door. The repair required stripping back the paint and inspection of the skin, As it was one of the charter fleet there was a lot of pressure to get it back in service. The repair was completed late at night and the sprayers didn't have the right paint in stock so they mixed up some, applied it and once it was dry sent the aircraft on it's way. Unfortunately the new grey was distinctly darker than the original! As far as I remember no-one ever complained and to the day it left the fleet in 2010/11 it was never fully resprayed; only being patched up during later repairs. You can see the area here three years later: http://cdn-www.airliners.net/photos/airliners/3/6/3/0231363.jpg?v=v40  and nine years on from the original repair a patch was still visible under the door! http://cdn-www.airliners.net/photos/airliners/2/7/1/1424172.jpg?v=v40 . We did plan to repaint it at a major check in 2004 as the first A321 to  go into the Whale livery but Marketing wouldn't pay for it, claiming it would be have to be at Engineering's expense because the A321 fleet wasn't going to be around for much longer and it would be eventually replaced by an A319! In the end it was tarted up and went back into service still blue and grey for another six years. Why the darker area wasn't done is lost in the mists of time...

 

One day I plan to do 'Delta Charlie' with it's mismatched nose job as part of my BMA collection along with some of the other Airbuses I've worked on that have gone on to other operators.

 

Jonathan

 

 

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for such an interesting post Jonathan!  I should say that another forum member has kindly offered me a spare tinlet of X336 so my immediate problem is sorted but if you can be bothered it would be interesting to have a Halfords match anyway - maybe somebody else would find it useful since X336 is no longer listed by Hannants and is obviously not just temporarily out of stock.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Jonathan's reply reminds me of the time when I was visiting East Midlands Airport just after the first British Midland Embraer 145? was delivered. The blue was a noticeably much lighter shade than the other BM planes there. It seems that even the manufacturers can get it slightly wrong sometimes.

Dave

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks everyone,

 

Dave that's good news about the Xtracolor. Just in case there's a problem, as promised, I popped into my local Halfords after work. After scouring the racks I couldn't find a decent match but on asking the paint guy he went through their set of colour swatches. The nearest one we could find was called Zastava Bright Blue 427 which he mixed up for me. I'll spray up a sample for a closer comparison but under a bright light it looks pretty close in the bottle:

 

DSCF1393_zpsxun21mma.jpg

 

I'm sure I read somewhere that Hannants plan to fully restock the range, starting with the more popular colours. I've got most of their airliner colours but there's a fair few I'd like to see make a return. Since  X306 has returned hopefully X336 will follow in a future batch.

 

2 hours ago, halcyonjet said:

Jonathan's reply reminds me of the time when I was visiting East Midlands Airport just after the first British Midland Embraer 145? was delivered. The blue was a noticeably much lighter shade than the other BM planes there. It seems that even the manufacturers can get it slightly wrong sometimes.

Dave

 

 

Your eyes weren't deceiving you, it was lighter. Don't blame Embraer though, it was our Marketing people - again. When they were specifying the external livery they sent sample colour panels to Brazil for Embraer to draw up the livery and order the paint. Unfortunately without consulting us they mixed up the original 'Diamond' blue with the later 1996 version. It wasn't picked up until the Engineering team went out to the factory for the deliveries. It was too late to change for the first two aircraft so G-RJXA and G-RJXB had to be delivered with the wrong blue! So if you ever build either of these ERJ145s, use the earlier X306 instead.

 

Jonathan

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for all that really useful information Jonathan.  

 

Some of the staff at my nearest Halfords tend to be rather less than helpful.   Maybe it was the paint guy's day off but a couple of years ago I had a surreal dialogue of the deaf type experience trying to get a can custom mixed to match my motorbike.  Ever since then I've stuck to cans off the shelf but if Hannants don't restock X336 I know what to ask for.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...