bianfuxia

Insane! That's really cool.

A little post-script to this. Yesterday was my birthday so despite having no time as we race to pack everything I decided to take one last run to a hobby shop. Beijing has some really awesome shops though they are incredibly hard to find unless you can read a bit of Chinese on taobao and work out where they are. They are always in some grotty alley in a residential area with no signs, never in malls or traditional shops (with maybe one pricey exception). I'd been a few times but still had to ride around in circles on my bike for about 15 minutes before I found the specific little alley! anyway while there I bought what I was actually after which was the Trumpeter 1/72 "Chinese Spaceship #10" better known as the Shenzhou 10 and Tiangong 1 combo. Then I saw the new Hasegawa 1/200 A321neo and even better the A321ceo. So I snapped up the ceo and also another A320 so I can cut that one back to an A319. My airliner building plot is that I want one of each type I've flown on, in the livery of the airline I flew, and ideally with no two aircraft in the same livery. Of course you can't get the bigger Airbus planes in 1/200, so far as I know, but at least now I have all the smaller ones (I've never been on an A318 so that's ok). If anyone's interested - and it's pretty esoteric - here is where I am at with that plot. A319 - Atlantic Airways, China Eagle Airlines, Beijing Capital airlines - got to convert the A320 and somehow find decals A320 - China Eastern - already built, just waiting for the decals which I already have A321 - many airlines but I will try to do China Southern I think. Better get on taobao today and find some. 732 - there's Hasegawa and Revell, I've built a few but not for this project. I'd like to do Malaysian. 733 - no kit, Hasegawa has a -400 I could shorten. I think I flew an old Norwegian airlines one once. 734 - see above, maybe Qantas 735 - Lufthansa, already built and I have the decals 736 - never flown, thanks for nothing SAS who put a 738 on the route I booked last summer just to knock off the 736! 737 - Air Do Japan, got the kit and its decals 738 - lots, but I am doing the Air China Olympics one, half finished, and have finished my China Eastern Purple Peacock one as well. 739 - Korean. I guess I need two of the 738 kits and can get a -900 and -600 out of them Then I've got the ANA 789 almost done, I went on that a year or two back. 788, there's a Hasegawa kit but I'll need some Hainan airlines decals. 744 I have half built and I have the KLM decals. Never went on a 743 but I could do either Qantas or United as the 742. 767 could be Mongolian, Hainan or Qantas but given the rule about no two similar liveries I guess I need to rustle up some Mongolian. 772 I have the Lauda boxing half built, 773 can be almost anyone as I've been on lots of those. Maybe Cathay or Emirates. Then there are no 1/200 kits for 757, A330, A340 or A380 (or A350 but I haven't been on that, thanks for nothing Air China who put a 789 on the route I booked only because it was an A350...well I had to fly the route but I chose that particular time for the 350). And there's not yet a 747-8i in 1/200 but if there is, I've been on Air China twice with that. Well if you're still reading I admire your interest. It's an esoteric eccentric hobby, this one!

Thanks Skodadriver! Yes Ray I am indeed going to Australia for a little while. I am between assignments. My visa expiry here is kind of like a hard Brexit. Nothing lined up yet so it'll be me, the wife, and three year old knocking on the door. "Hi Mum, I'm unemployed and homeless...and in 6 weeks a shipping container full of half-built model kits is going to arrive". Hopefully it will all fall together in the next few months.

Thanks! The reason I want to convert is because I build in 1:200 and so far as I know there is only the Hasegawa A320, plus the A320neo and A321neo. Thanks for the kind offer about scanning but it's ok, it will be a while before I ever find time to do this and the kits are all going into storage as we are moving countries. thanks for the responses!

thanks! Yes the decals took some effort and a bit of Mr Mark Softer but not too hard in the end. They aligned pretty easily - must have been carefully designed as you'd expect from Hasegawa. It's a great kit nice and easy for a quick build.

Sorry for the not very good cellphone pics.

I finished this one up not so long ago. I bought it for myself as a Fathers Day present (after my wife forgot Fathers Day, haha). She sent me off to the hobby store in Sapporo where we were visiting and this was one of the things I came back with. Really neat kit and easy to get it to look nice, as it's moulded in white and therefore takes Tamiya white spray pretty nicely.

Hi all, Some time back someone shared this great thread about building variants of the 737 by cutting or adding fuselage sections (eg a 738 to a 737 by cutting out part of the fuselage). https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234925943-s-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g-and-shrnkg-a-737-step-by-step/ I wondered if there was a similar one for the Airbus A320 series?

Thanks everyone! It really is a good little kit. I think DrawDecals already makes Indian decals for it, too. Maybe RAAF also. I'd like to see Hasegawa release a kit with both those options in it. The reality is that the only difference on the kit (as opposed probably to the real plane) between this and a regular 737 is all those lumps and fins. A reasonably patient modeller could probably just scratch build it up. The kit sells at a premium to regular 737s but for me it was worth it just to have the additional bits and an instruction sheet!

I bought this one as a treat for myself around Christmas 2016 I think; recently I was working on it in the 737 group build but for various reasons didn't get it finished. A while back I did get around to finishing it off - pretty quickly in the end as it is really just one colour and pretty simple decals. Apologies for the photos. Something about white balance, blah blah. It's a good kit though - I recommend it if you like this type. I don't know how it stacks up for accuracy but in 1/200 I think it probably meets the needs of most people. The only thing I don't like is the windscreen decal - seems a bit blue for me particularly against some of my other 737s in the same scale. Anyway, here it is:

Well I finally finished this one a little while back.

Wow! Really awesome

This is my Aoshima Hayabusa space probe. It's 1/32. I used it as a test for a technique to do solar panels. I sprayed them with a metallic blue from Tamiya, and then sprayed them again from a side angle with tiny burst from metallic gold (also Tamiya). The idea was to have a light dusting of gold on the sides of the raised detail on the panels. When you move the model around, the gold shows up more or less depending on the angle. I feel like this is a bit more realistic than just painting them blue, because pictures of solar panels in space (eg on the ISS) show them ranging from blue to gold depending on the light angle. Other than that the whole thing is brush painted. I mocked up one image of my model flying near the Itokawa asteroid it flew to. The second of these probes is presently close by another asteroid.

Sad to miss the deadline, I was called away from home for work for the whole of last week. Family commitments over the weekend meant I couldn't finish (my plan was to go ahead without the missing canopy). Never mind. And congrats to those who finished - great builds in the gallery!

Not really, I have another business trip next week, but after that I think I will be ok until the end of the GB. I've already got every conceivable shade of silver spray paint ready to go, and it's a pretty simple kit, so once I get the cockpit done and attached it should be fairly smooth progress.