t15dja

Indeed....as someone once said ......"I've started so I'll finish"

I'm aware that the good folks from AMK have previously responded to posts in this forum, meaning that presumably and hopefully they are reading this and previous comments. If so, come on AMK, please tell us what is happening with this kit that did, and hopefully still does, promise so much.

That could indeed be why it has gone quiet! However, I still have faith....and two on pre-order!

Its all gone very quiet again. Does anyone have any update please?

Yes, I can picture people taking to the streets on receiving the news of a new 1/72 Concorde tooling, enjoying street parties, participating in spontaneous outpourings of public happiness. Yes, I see in my mind's eye scenes similar to those outside Buckingham Palace on VE day, indeed on that subject I see the full Royal family making repeated forays out onto the balcony to receive and acknowledge the public joy at the news. BUT.......sadly, and even despite the up-welling of positive human emotion at such a momentous announcement, I still don't see the trains departing on time!

Yes, I did read that the windows on the kit are oversized. Unfortunately that was after I'd joined the fuselage halves so I can't do my usual trick of making a long thin "worm" out of milliput, pushing it down onto the windows from the inside of the fuselage and then cutting off, smoothing and sanding the bits of milliput that get squeezed out through the window holes. I could try doing the same from the outside in to the fuselage but I'd be worried that after sanding the milliput wouldn't have enough surface area of the fuselage to grip on to i.e. the milliput "windows" might eventually fall inside the fuselage. What do you reckon?

Right, then, Christmas and New Year celebrations are done and dusted so it's back to the build and a progress report. You may remember that the nose cone and the two pieces back from it had moulding issues and I had emailed Braz models to see if they had any plans to produce replacements. On hearing nothing from Braz I'd emailed Revell to see if they had any replacement parts and Revell have since written back to say they have referred my request back to where their spares are kept in Germany. So I'm currently waiting to see what they say. I'll be very pleased if they do have spares (Revell's spares Dept have always been very good and have never let me down in the past), however given that this kit is (a) quite old now and (b) ex-Airfix/Heller I'm not holding my breath. The parts I've got can be used with a bit of work. So, in the meantime I've been working on the rest of the kit i.e. fuselage, tail & wings. The instructions would have you build the tail and fuselage as sub-assemblies and then join them together. However, doing it that way I thought it would be inevitable that the tail and fuselage sections wouldn't join properly so I elected to glue the left fuselage to the left tail and vice versa, see photo below, and then join the two halves once the glue had set. There is still a seam between the tail and fuselage sections but this will be easy to fill and sand. Once the two halves are set it's just then a matter of attaching the fuselage "bulkheads" and front wheel well and then carefully joining the two halves together, gluing a small section at a time in order to minimise any centre seam as much as possible. Then fill the small seam between the fuselage and the tail. In doing so I've noticed that main fuselage section of this kit (parts 103 and 104) is made from a much thinner grade of plastic than the tail or nose sections....has anyone else noticed this? It's very apparent if you hold the sub-assembly up to the light thus: Also, the small leading section of the tail fin that is part of the fuselage is much thinner than the main body of the fin as hopefully can be seen below. In this photo I've already started to add some filler to thicken out the front section of the fin. Here's a side view: The tail wheel doors did not easily fit the lip of tail wheel well therefore I added a bit of sprue as support. Once the doors were installed I also filled the large, out of scale indentations on the underside of the tail.... Before...... And after filling but before sanding.......... So with the fuselage / tail sections joined it was time to add the bottom plate that makes up the fuselage and bottom surface of the wings. I don't have a photo of this stage but suffice to say that, after much clamping and taping, the two sections went together well. The instructions would next have you glue the upper wings to the bottom wing plate and fuselage. I chose to do this slightly differently in that I glued the upper wing sections to the fuselage sides but not to the lower wing plate. In doing it this was I think I have achieved a pretty good upper wing to fuselage joint that hopefully will require minimal filling and sanding. Once the upper wing / fuselage joint was thoroughly dry I then glued the upper and lower wing surfaces together, which brings me to here (ignore the undercarriage door for now - more on that later): There was quite a large gap between the front fuselage and the front of the wing plate that I had to shim with thin styrene sheet, trim and sand. Before.... After.... I noticed that this does leave quite a visible seam between the lower wing plate and the upper wing sections that will require filling, since photos of the real thing show this area to be smooth. Outer lower wing sections were then glued in. This left a noticeable gap the whole length of the joints. I understand that most of these joints will be covered by the engines however just in case I added in some shims of thin styrene sheet, which will be trimmed and sanded. Moving onto the wheel wells, I'm doing Concorde in flight so all the gear doors have to be closed up.....another problem! All of the doors, both front and main, have very little lip to sit on so I've had to glue spare sprue to the inside of the doors and then trim it to the right length so the doors fit flush with the fuselage: Main gear doors #1 Main gear doors #2 I also had to do the same with the front gear doors. So, here we have a photo of the underside with all gears doors attached as flush as possible, and all wing sections glued. Gaps abound! Once again, I used shims of thin styrene sheet to fill the larger gaps, the rest will be filled and sanded. Did I mention which filler I've been using? Well it's this: Revell's filler is smooth to apply but does dry fast so you have to work quickly. It does sand beautifully smooth, though. So, here's a picture of the underside with filler applied but not sanded. The masking tape is to avoid getting filler into the the panel lines. And here's the result after initial sanding: That brings me right up to date. Next stage will be to apply a few shots of primer to see what further filling and sanding of the various joints will be required. Oh...........and by the way......I also want to do a Concorde with wheels down and in Landor livery, so I couldn't believe it when I recently managed to pick this up from ebay for the princely sum of £22 plus postage! To be continued.....

Yes, the link most definitely works.....many thanks for doing this. I for one will enjoy studying these photos at my leisure over the festive break.....and a happy Christmas to you too.

That cockpit view is brilliant and just what I need.....thanks!

Many thanks for that! You are a very lucky man indeed, Sheepie, to be able to just "jump in" Concorde's cockpit....I'll think of you doing that while I'm battling the Christmas traffic!

Sheepie, following your kind offer to take photos, could I also trouble you to take some close up pictures of the "shroud" (sorry, don't know its technical name) underneath the visor if you are able please, so I can see how to try and model it. Also, if I can borrow one of the pictures from neilg's build here: As you can see, the way the cockpit is located means that the kit's engineer's console partly obstructs the window to the rear of the first officer on the starboard side. Is it like this in real life? Again, a couple of photos of this window and its proximity to the flight engineer's console on the real thing would be most helpful. Thanks in anticipation.

I'm doing mine in flight with the nose up. I am intending to put in a panel under the visor to hide the (redundant in my case) droop mechanism and also to avoid having a void under the screen. That build by "bornagainmodeller" seems like a good representation, although the horizontal strengtheners don't seem to be equally spaced as can be seen here:

The drooping section of the nose is not symmetrical when joined...one side sticks out about 4mm wider than the side of the fuselage., also the edge where the visor sits is bent on one side. The nose cone also has two deep gouges running almost the length of it, which may have been due to an air bubble during moulding? Both of these issues are fixable, but I have still emailed Revell to see if replacement parts are still available, which I somehow doubt.

Marvellous! Many thanks.

Possibly, but would not do the Air France version, having read of your experience with the Air France decals! I fancy doing a BA Landor version with wheels down next time, possibly also with the Brengun detailing set...............however I am running way ahead of myself here, since I'm nowhere finishing my current version yet...........and then there's all the other stuff in the stash that I am desperate to start!