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Lockheed L-1011 TriStar Cathay Pacific Hasegawa 1/200


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The Lockheed TriStar kit was one of the first in Hasegawas LoveLiner series in the early 80s.

It is very accurate in shape,nicely molded and detailed.

Apart from the 1/144 Otaki / now also Eastern Express kit,its the only accurate  TriStar plastic molded kit.

 

The Cathay Pacific version was released around 1980 and so the decal set offers the original paint scheme complete with the union jack on the tail.

The decals were in surprisingly good condition and could be applied with no problems.

The build was straight forward and the only modification I made,was shorten the engine exhausts like I did on the All Nippon TriStar.

Hasegawa never updated the engines and always included the longer,2nd exhaust version.

 

Cathay Pacifics TriStars served very well for 20 years before they were replaced by the Airbus A330.

 

Hope you like her

 

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Yes, I do like this one too Alex! I agree it was the most accurate TriStar around for many years along with their DC-10/MD-11 and A300s.

This is one of my favourite liveries and I plan on finishing one in 1/144 some day.

Cheers,

Ian

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  • 2 weeks later...
40 minutes ago, phil1 said:

a tristar feast mate!! another flawless model! just out of interest why did it have a union jack flag? i take it was hong kong based?

Thank you very much mate.

As Hongkong was a british colony until 1997,Cathay Pacific had the union jack on their aircraft.

After the handover to China,the flag was removed from the aircrafts as well as they got new registrations starting with B- ,same as in China.

 

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Beautiful model as always Alex, thanks for sharing.  I assume the cats were busy somewhere else?

 

Just to add a little about the Union Jack, in 1948 the Swire Group became the main shareholder in Cathay Pacific.  The headquarters of Swire are in London so while Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony it made perfect sense for Cathay aircraft to carry the Union Jack.  Cathay Pacific retired their last Tristar in October 1996 before Hong Kong was handed back to China so none of the Tristars carried a B- registration and they probably retained the Union Jacks until the end of their service. David Riley who is or was a member of Britmodeller has an excellent web page giving the individual history of each aircraft.

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Beautifully built model Alex!.....back in the mid 80s I was stationed in Hong Kong in the Army Air Corps and many times I have flown back to UK in a Cathay Pacific Tri Star.....so much room on board!...I also worked at Gatwick Airport years later and used to enjoy going up and down in the lift to the galley in the Tri Star!!....great aircraft!

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14 hours ago, Skodadriver said:

Beautiful model as always Alex, thanks for sharing.  I assume the cats were busy somewhere else?

 

Just to add a little about the Union Jack, in 1948 the Swire Group became the main shareholder in Cathay Pacific.  The headquarters of Swire are in London so while Hong Kong was a British Crown Colony it made perfect sense for Cathay aircraft to carry the Union Jack.  Cathay Pacific retired their last Tristar in October 1996 before Hong Kong was handed back to China so none of the Tristars carried a B- registration and they probably retained the Union Jacks until the end of their service. David Riley who is or was a member of Britmodeller has an excellent web page giving the individual history of each aircraft.

Thank you very much.Cats were enjoying themselves at the dinner...

Thank you also for the further explanations on the CX TriStars and the linking to that superb site.Very interesting history there.

 

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Great model Alex, it brings back a lot of memories of the 1:1 scale "Tribarge".

 

Just to clarify, the Union Jack started disappearing off the fins of Cathay aircraft several years BEFORE 1997 (much to the angst of the staff - the Hanover really was coming...), but since the L.1011 was scheduled to have been out of the fleet before 1997 possibly they retained theirs until their demise. The change from VR-H** to B-*** registrations occurred a few years after 1997.

 

It's possibly a bit simplistic to state that the L.1011 was replaced by the A330 - many Tristar routes were then flown (initially at least) by the B747-200/300, as they in turn were being displaced by the B744 on the Long Haul routes.

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Great build Alex...............Brought back some memories too. I worked in Hong Kong between 1988-91 and flew on the Cathay Pacific Tristar's many times on their medium range routes around Asia. Since I lived quite close to the infamous 'checkerboard' in Kowloon I also marvelled at their approaches (along with just about every other commercial 'heavy') into Kai Tak International Airport especially during the Typhoon season !.....hair raising stuff.   

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a beautiful model and great reminder of these classic kits that for some strange reason, don't seem to have been picked up and expanded upon by any other vendor in he same scale for some weird reason. I had a whole fleet of Loveliners across the tops of my kitchen cupboards in the 90's - there must have been about 20 of them in a row - such a sensible scale

 

Thanks for bringing this kit to life, such a classic, just like the TriStar itself really..

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 Hi Alex,

 

Excellent model, beautiful finish. I made this kit, in Hong Kong when it first came out, but mine was not a patch on yours. I have a couple of Kurt's Authentic airliners L1011's and plan to do one of these as VR-HHY, the final CX aircraft. Also, thank you Skodadriver for you kind comments about the Tristar Story article on my website. I had a two year brief from Cathay to photograph all their Tristars before they were retired, which I accomplished. I recall that a complete set were published in the CX L1011 Farewell booklet they issued. The Union Jack started to actually disappear in the late 1980's and none of the Tristars were wearing it by the end. I photographed the final flight from Nagoya to Taipei and then on to HKG, as well as the farewell flight down Hong Kong harbour at low level, partly from the flight deck. I really miss the old bird. Much of my 125,000 miles annual business travel was done on the Tristar fleet and because of my part time photography role with CX, I got to spend a lot of it in the jump seat. The greatest cockpit in the business IMHO! But, I do have to say that they were showing their age by the time they departed. I recall seeing water coming out of the air-conditioning vents in business class more times than I could count, with the poor cabin crew mopping it up with sponges and rags on extending poles! The CX Tristar fleet had, at one time or another four Red Arrows Red Ones in it, including Ray Hannah, who was the first Red One. Ray helped me a lot with my early work on the Tristar Story. Still their departure gave me a lot more work, as I then did the introduction of the photography for the initial four A430's and then each of the A330's! I still have half a dozen various airline versions of the Hasegawa L1011 kits in the stash which I wouldn't part with any of them. Great to see someone doing such a good job of it.

 

David Riley

Edited by HKGBravo1
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