phil1

bit more progress tonight, most of the white painted areas are in with the exception of some of the corners that are circular, a few more taxi lanes are in.... started on the neglected opposite side of the pier which is mainly international gates which has some of the heavier metal that the airport can accommodate. Used to be mainly 757s but the centre stands can arguably take a 767 or a a310. The corner stand (9) can take anything up to 777 size but the dreamliner has to take up 2 smaller stands otherwise it's on a remote. The mighty emirates 777-300, a common sight again at Newcastle Need a few more bus lanes on the left and some minor detailing around the pier. Also I need to fully paint in the passenger walkways leading on ramp. There will be some red hatched danger areas soon and obviously the rest of the taxiways need applied. For the painted 'STOP' sections i was thinking a stencil set or decal full speed ahead!

One thing I've noticed about the buildings exterior is that nearly every wall is surrounded by a slightly larger footprint of the structure which in places features steps to give excess to passengers to arrive or exit via the ramp. These areas are slightly elevated to kerb height but at the moment I'm only concerned with having the 2-D footprint to help me line up some of the walkways and vehicle access lanes. This is the basic footprint of the lower floors, some area's protrude out further depending mainly passenger walkways. Once the building is on top there's actually very little of the base visible. These are a car lane and 2 bus lanes (right). the new gray area is a access path for personnel to walk under the tunnel, eventually I'll add a railing between the path and bus lane. The front section has 2 large access doors with 2 large sets of steps leading up to them. This is just a little right of that area and is stand 3 and gate 3 which is always for BA. The odd shape on the side wall is there because this stand houses a jet bridge in that exact location Not the easiest area to get reference photos although google maps offers some views in 3-D globe mode got some areas of paint bleed which will need touched up. toward the rear of the building we've got more access doors for passengers and to the left of that is where all the ground equipment is stored. Forgive the elevated end of the pier, a few gently placed weights on top for 24 hours might help straighten it out This shot is just on the other side of the corner showing the concrete base and steps for passengers to board or exit

cheers Tony! I give both sides a few coats of ronseal waterproof varnish, I hope it suffices but I agree with the changes in humidity and temperature could wreak hovic. Underneath 75% of the area are propped up by crates that are stacked upside down but now I'm concerned that where the gap is it will allow it to droop. The airport model is actually not lying flat and that's probably an issue with the board rather than the model. I don't know if you noticed but in the background but I have a sheet of plywood which was attempt 1 but I abandoned when it showed signs of warp, I might slip that underneath to see if that helps. what clear car paint do you use? does it dry matt rather than glossy? when I finally finish, I was going to use some halfords clear matt lacquer to try and protect the top, it will also make it easier to wipe off the dust Phil

I've got a slight problem with the pier as it's tilting up at the ends a few millimetres off the ground, I'm not sure how that's happened as it's lay in the house for 6 months gathering dust. I think I will put some light weights on top of the structure to weigh the ends down Unfortunately you don't get much in the paint markers so I'm going to have to buy a batch as there's a lot more detail to put in. I think it's probably a good idea to get the pier in to make some reference markers as thinks like the little access tunnel in the centre need to match up to it's road lane. The bus lanes need drawn in on this side as well as a few mini access roads and some walkways for passengers leading from the gates to the aircraft a busy day at newcastle. A few new additions are the zvezda 737-700 top left which will be the KLM cityhopper which has always been a regular, a pair of zvezda 757-200s next to it on stand 11 and 12 respectively which will be a couple of old Thomas cook machines (probably a little out of sync with the dreamliner and NEO's parked around) and another 757-200 with winglets which was Jet2 regular G-LSAB Probably the wrong place for a 757-200 as the wing is encroaching the vehicle access lane, however the dreamliner is by some distance and it's common to see that parked in that stand (maybe if the stands next to it empty?) next steps - 1. finish off the white markings 2. draw in the yellow taxi in lines and STOP markers (yellow on black) 3. add the red checked danger areas around the ramp 4. some additional resurfaced areas (especially where the 777 is that are a brownish grey in comparison)

thanks mate, nice to make a bit progress phil

Right.....it's been a while The original board has been abandoned, it proved too be too flimsy, there were imperfections and the wood patterns were showing through the paint. So attempt 2, and I purchased MDF board but also double thickness. unfortunately this was far heavier and I had to chop quite a bit off the far end just to reduce the weight. With a second attempt it give me an opportunity to be more accurate with the ramp areas using halfords Ford Polar grey With everything looking a bit too uniform I blended in most of the different sections and used a white paint pen to divide the board up. After drawing the basic outlines I put some detail to bring things alive a little I might give the ramp areas a blast of polar grey just to being them out slightly. After the white divider lines I will be using a yellow paint pen to bring in the taxi lines to the gate

Just wondering if anyone has this piece from a zvezda 737-700 or 800 kit? I've got loads of spare junk to trade (yes i ditched the EE winglets!) Phil

I'm glad to say the project has not been abandoned just delayed indefinitely,. A bit like Top gun 2. During this period I have actually quietly done some unpublished work. With the outstanding release of Zvezda's 757-200 ultimately rendered my Braz masterpiece almost redundant, it got me thinking....every time I do a conversion project someone ends up releasing the tool. I started building a An-225 and revell released the tool, then I converted an a350-900 to a 1000 and zvezda released it. So as I started on Braz conversions for the 757-200 and a 757-300 zvezda brought out the 200 and the latter due for release later in 2022. I'm grateful but I wish the timing was better especially after paying for 2 sets of 757 resin winglets from the U.S of A. The 757 kit is probably the best and the easiest I've ever assembled, even the horizontal stabilisers clip on and it takes effort to remove them. The only real problem I encountered was blending the cockpit glass window into the fuselage but prior to that I was impressed that the cockpit window could be attached after the fuselage join without fear that it could slip into the fuselage gap, it was that good of a fit. Obviously in comparison the Braz is about 5 times heavier and retains the old clunky wings of the infamous Minicraft kit. Zvezda have captured the elegance of the popular jet with accuracy which has persuaded me to use the Zvezda version for my Jet2 example. As my theme is Newcastle airport I might retain the Braz as United Airlines for the short livid New York route, I've already added a spare satcom to the rear fuselage just to differentiate the two. Obviously there is a hell of a lot more detail in the Zvezda version, as I'm going for the metallic livery I think the fuselage detail is important because it will show up everything. Also note the accuracy in the kit here, The gear opening on the Minicraft wings is too large and the fairings are more slender. Also the amount of work that went into straightening those engine pylons was the stuff of nightmares. In addition to the 737-800 and the 757-200 I wanted a 737-300 to join them with the later life retrofitted winglets. Best tool on the market is DACO but with none available and seemingly discontinued I took a punt with the Eastern Express 'New Tooling' which is remarkably like the old tooling by EE in quality but parts resembling the DACO kit.... like they got their hands on some experimental moulds As you can see the parts fit together beautifully! Who needs glue?! Well apparently I do need glue and lots of it. Obviously use polystyrene cement and try and fuse the parts together. The gaps I fill with a thick none drip superglue, I find this much better than filler or milliput as the glue tends to blend with the plastic more effectively and doesn't show up as well under paint when its been sanded down. The bottom of the fuselage is probably more of a challenge The result being a nice flat smooth finish. I had to re-scribe the top panel lines but it could have been a lot worse The opposite side needs a bit more TLC. The rudder isn't the best fit and doesn't even line up with the vertical stab The only thing I've been able to use from the 800 Zvezda kits is a spare pair of winglets (winglets were provided but they were about 1 and half times the real size) , they are a little wide but I will work them into the wings Missing piece from the Zvezda kit, I'm just going to have to improvise here Together with one of it's larger successors the 800NG. As a cheap alternative to model paint I've primed it with Halfords racking Grey which is an exact match for Airbus Grey and almost Boeing Grey (close enough) Which is also Revell 371 and Tamiya Insignia White. As all 3 Jet2 will be metallic I'm using this as the fuselage base and it's correct colour for the wings and horizontal stabs.

It was worth a gamble as there is nothing else on the market at the minute. I'm actually waiting for a DACO 737-400 which is still available on ebay which I did consider chopping the fuselage up but it will nevertheless interesting to see the comparison Phil

I thought so as much. It seems though even the Zvezda winglet is slightly to large for the stubby 300 wing, which makes your Air Baltic build all the more impressive, I've noticed you've even got the little trailing (strobe?) light - which I'm presuming is that little tiny rectangular piece that fits into the zvezda winglet? Although I have spare winglets I don't have these pieces so I'm just going to reshape the current winglet to the correct size. I did think about chopping off the exhaust section of the EE kit and replacing it with the more detailed one but it's probably not worth it Phil

well guys.....I've received my EE 737-300 'new tooling' and its: (drumroll) CRAP. new tooling apparently but very familiar. It reminds me of a kit I made a while ago, I think it was a EE 737-300. This one ALSO comes with addition lumps of plastic and beautifully crafted lumps of sprue embedded into the pieces that are intended to be part of the model. Only a 3mm gap between the fuselage parts when welded together with a mixture of Poly cement and a nice layer of extra strength super glue on the top. lovely fit! The wings are of similar levels of piggery I have a lot of spare zvezda parts, we've talked about the winglets....but are any other parts usable on the 300? I read somewhere that the engines might be different? like an even more exaggerated shaped cowling appearing flatter at the base? Phil

i feel better now! where is the An-225 passenger conversion? or the double decker 767? phil impressed

it's getting ridiculous, last count was.... a321neo a320neo 2 x a319 a318 737-800 737 MAX 8 737-700 737-900 777-300 787-8 4 x 757-200 1 x 757-300 and just for vintage purposes 747-100 dc-8 tu-134 IL-62 and on the way 737-300 and a 737-400 all will be completed by 2075!

I need to get back in the game as I'm missing great builds like this. Always look forward to seeing your finished builds and this is no exception! I love the bold yet simple livery of air baltic. Phil

Hi Dave funny you say that because after posting them shots I thought the winglets looked huge compared to the wing, obviously I know the 300 has a smaller wing compared to the NGs. I too have some spare winglets from a 900 conversion. Did you have any problems fixing them to the DACO wings? I'm definitely doing the silver/red as I hate that Jet2holidays allegiant concoction. I've got a Jet2 zvezda 757-200 on the go as well as a 737-800, thought the 300 would compliment them well. That would be most appreciated mate, there's no hurry though as I won't be on to decals until the summer as I'm building about 20 airliners at the same time! phil

Hi Alex thanks for your reply. indeed you are right. They actually look like a rip off of the DACO kits however some speculate that they are not with some minor differences but the major parts seem to be very similar. Either way like you've stated this has to be an upgrade on the original mess. They even include winglets which is great as I'm going for a Jet2 300 with winglet retrofit - I won't necessarily be going for the EE Jet2 kit, because the decals look awful....just the cheapest new tooling i can find will do I have actually bought a DACO 737-400, will be interesting to compare cheers Phil

Hi, I wonder if anyone has the above in their stash or knows where I can find one? I've put together the Eastern Express version previously and it's pretty awful so I wanted something with a bit more quality. As far as I know this is the only decent 737-300 kit out there (I don't fancy a conversion either) I'm willing to pay a fair amount, cheers Phil

hello mate, I'm really interested to see your build progress. I've started 2 757 conversions, the 757-200 and the 757-300 (minicraft/braz) but I'm thinking of trading the 757-200 in favour of the Zvezda kit as I too am doing Jet2. Mine however is going to be the standard colours and I think the metallic finish would benefit from the nice accurate detailing of a Zvezda kit. The other is going to be condor and as with most conversions I'd be resigned to losing the detail even if I used 2 zvezda kits together so I'm not as concerned Phil

The next task will be to mark out where each stand is located, I'll do this by using the pier as point of reference. Each distance is taken from google maps and is divided by 144 to find it's precise location on my board. I've started with making a basic shape of the reinforced areas of each stand (the lighter area) now I can start forming the area around each stand making space for access roads. I'm lucky as the width of the masking tape (5cm) is nearly exactly the width between each stand in 144 scale. The darker paved areas have had some sanding treatment to make them look a bit more realistic. This is the reverse side of the board The only slight problem is that although the base was sanded and primed, the wood effect is showing through some areas of the lightest grey, I think a lot more paint will have to go down to hide this. this is the progress so far. Once I'm happy with it the whole base is going to get a few layers of matt laquer to protect it. There is an incredible amount of detail to actually go into this, including taxi markings in yellow white border lines separating each stand red hatched areas of danger I'll either have to airbrush these in or find some decals of some sort

Finally managed to give the board a full coverage of halfords primer. I'll need something a bit darker for the asphalt and then get a bit creative for the reinforced ramp areas. Once I've done that I'm going to coat the whole thing in matt laquer. All aircraft have been given a coat of primer. The light gray aircraft are already have their wings painted Tamiya Insignia white and the dreamliner is the only aircraft with pure white wings so I used that as it's base colour a new addition closest the shot is a KLM 737-900 (conversion) replacing my air france babybus a318 conversion. This stand historically alternates between KLM and air france. I'm considering ordering the Zvezda 757 kit to replace my Braz minicraft conversion, I've done a decent job but the zvezda kit will be far more detailed and the Jet2 757 I'm doing is all metallic and will look better with detail in the fuselage. I may convert this to a United 757 which featured on the short lived new york route. The little tower is just a prop at the moment as I'm not overly happy with it, I need some better tools for a start I've swapped the 737-900 and the 757-300 here for my a318 conversion (pic isn't the best sorry) and a 767-300 which probably belongs in a pre dreamliner era when there was First choice rather than Thomson For my back to the 80s theme I've been working on a 747-100 for Wardair Canada and a DC8 transamerica. The airport peer is too modern for this era but what the hell.

50 shades of Gray....paint With several coats of Tamiya Insignia White (a match in my opinion for airbus gray) it was time to start colouring the different building sections on the roof. I was looking for a very subtle difference from the Insignia White and after plenty of research I found the best spray can is probably Tamiya AS16 Light Grey (USAF). Like most tamiya sprays It came out darker than expected. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a spray somewhere in between these 2 lighter shades. I was hoping to use Revell 371 spray paint but it's identical to Tamiya Insignia White and everything else is just too dark a shade. The second building with the vertically striped roof also needs painting the same shade to the one on the far right (I painted one just to test the colour) This is Tamiya TS-81 Royal Light Gray which I originally painted the whole thing as the primary colour. Again it was way to dark but I found it more suitable for this area. The area where the observation tower is going to be is darker asphalt looking in appearance and for this I have Tamiya AS-2 Light Grey (IJN) which is a little darker than TS-81. Your probably wondering why I am not using an airbrush however this thing is more than a metre wide so spray paint is a must For reference Revell 371 Humbrol 196 Tamiya Insignia White AS-20 are all the same colour. All are what you'd call Airbus wing gray. Boeing gray is a tad darker I believe but the only match for that seem to be by Xtracolor in a tin. I did read that Tamiya surface Primer Light Gray is a match for boeing gray but the store didn't have any and so I went with the AS-16 (USAF) Light Grey instead.

The part I have been dreading.....the windows. As mentioned before the easiest thing would have been to have real windows and build inside the pier itself the gate waiting rooms but this would involve more work and make applying the outer cladding a very intricate and painstaking process, So in I decided to take on another very intricate and painstaking process and build the window frames and there's plenty of them to make! eventually I'll fill each gap with a square of mirrored paper. I actually bought some dark reflective paper and some gunmetal but this seems to work the best. I've just gently tacked these on temporarily just to see what they'll look like so forgive me if they look a bit askew. I'm actually quite pleased with the mirror effect and looks better than I thought it would. If I can get some good reflections of the aircraft it may take the attention away from what's behind the window itself. The red circle shows an alternative I'm thinking of using than the current columns that fit over the bare wire. The current columns look a bit too thick, unfortunately these new slender columns only cover the wire on one side so I need to make a decision on that. As I ran out of materials to do more windows I decided to crack on with an important feature that is not present on my model. About halfway along there is a small tower on the main roof. Newcastle has the Emirates tower which is nearer the main taxiway off airport and it still has the old tower which has been abandoned since, therefore I'm not sure what this is used for whether it's purely observatory or security I really don't know but it has a birds eye view of everything happening around the pier, As with the height of the pier I also have had to guess the height of the tower. Again I will be using the magic window effect I've spent this afternoon throwing this together, it's not a 3-D print but pretty much feels and looks like one with the amount of plastic I've used. If you remember from earlier in my thread that I said that I'd divided the whole structure into squares of 4.3 by 4.3cm, again the base here is 4.3 x 4.3cm but straying from the commonality of the rest of the structure, the roof actually extends out to a slightly larger size. A tidy up of the edges tomorrow and I'll see if it's acceptable, I'll also need some window frames to give it some detail.

well despite only being a wee nipper back then you are already a legend in my eyes mate! I have very vague memories of my Dad taking me to the roof top but I certainly remember the Wardair 747 and the Britannia 767s. On a side note I did consider building the old pier first then having the newer modern parts added on (but being able to remove them) so I could switch between an 80s diorama and a more recent one but I think my boss would have to give me a year off work to pull that off. I have started a wardair 747 in my stash so once completed I will try some trick shots so that the pier is not obviously different, (I think some of the gate waiting areas were built on the skinny corridor but not all of them?) Very kind comments Chris Phil

thanks mate it's a lot to take on but it's also a learning curve too. I'm just hoping I can make some proper progress soon! Phil cheers mate! glad you think so Phil

Yes from wall to wall! originally I was concerned that if I chopped some off the whole thing would splinter and disintegrate (it was cheap)