skippiebg

Not sure the Minicraft engines are the best bet. They look too slim and anaemic. Revell for me, personally. But each to his own :)))

Sorry... Silly me!!! The Revell JT3Ds should work fine, in theory. I don't know ho easy they are to adapt to the Roden wing, but in terms of shape they ought to be jut right. I'd say, go for it!

The engines are overscale. Roden somehow ended up with very nice JT4s... Sadly, there is no way to modify them. I am not sure which Revell engines you are thinking of. I have seen Revell 707 engines that pretend to be JT3s but that originally posed as Conways. In fact they are are neither, being more of a 1960s misunderstanding. The way to go would be to use a set of Welsh Models or Authentic Airliners JT3s. Each is correct and to scale.

Here is a brilliant rundown of the Minicraft kit's pros (few) and cons (many). I revisited my ages-old build and discovered why it put me off -- the huge and broad engraved lines. Anyhow, trust of help...

Well, don't remember it, but can't have been me! Not that touchy

Hi -- basically, the trailing edges are too thick, and the nose is off in shape. The famous "hump" atop the fuselage is easily doable with nothing more than a modicum of sanding in the right spot. The flightdeck windows are best "de-emphasised" with a bit of filler and redone with decals as they are more redolent of a late 1940s futuristic exercise entitled something like "a glimpse into the shape of the giant flying-boats that shall, to-morrow, fly many dozens of passengers each across the Empire". On the plus side, the engines (all three makes are represented in diverse packings) are quite good and workable (though early kits had wrong fan spin directions...). This is just my opinion, and not backed by any experience as my one and only attempted MC 777 has sat on what is often and increasingly irritatingly called the Shelf of Doom. I recall thinking at the time (2002-ish, I should think) the kit was about par for the course. (You know -- a kit gets released, favourable and balanced reviews come out, and then concerted hate mails that get repeated and embroidered upon go on to destroy it so thoroughly that the early reviews look like they were written under the influence of bribes or drugs.) The reason for its extended shelf-of-doomitude has not been any growing revulsion at its quality or anything like that, but ever more frequent lunges back to my beloved 1950s, 1960s, and early/mid 1970s. Of course, since Zvezda released their 777, the Minicraft one has altogether lost what little shine it had.

Err-r... it would be graceless to carp, but... the AC intakes below the centre section were different on A300B2s/B4s. Rather a lot more straighter and more angular. Like planks of wood with NACA intakes, really... They became rounded on the A300-600 and A310. Other than that, ta-s-ty! Looking forward to seeing it built!

Brilliant! I suppose the filliet that Turbofan is asking about is the mottled greenish/grey item in the video..?

Oh, and at the risk of flooding the topic (the fairing forward of the leading edge aside) that aft of the trailing edge is wrong on the Airfix kit. (It might have been right for the A300B1 and possibly some of the earliest airframes, though I haven't checked.) It needs extending rearwards about 4-5mm (if memory serves) to reach beneath the emergency exit instead of ending before it. Again, the Beluga kit has it right. Easy to do, too, yet never ever done as fai as I know...

Oh, and you'd never guess what I found... http://www.imgrum.org/media/1120914281651710244_1746000201

Hmm... the time-honoured method of counting windows (rivets are too small at my age) tells me the actual shape was identical between early and later A300s, Krueger flap or no Krueger flap. There might be some infinitesimal difference, but we can ignore it, surely... In kitland, the Revell Beluga has it (I went to take a peek) and Airbus diznae, having an angled junction between wing and body. It IS a small difference, though! By the way, AV O, re. your A310/A300-600 tailplane query, the tailplanes of the two were entirely identical. The Revell Beluga and Revell A310 (for all the latter's shortcomings) have them right.

Wow! Thank you for this wonderful set of views! Now someone's opened my eyes, I'd say, looking at the 3rd pic on row 2, the Airfix kit has no fairing (the cusp or strake or whatever it is called that licks across from the wing leading edge and curls onto the side of the fiselage). I'd also say it would be very easy to make one, and it might make a difference.

Compound. It was identical in all airframes, even the later A300-600 and beyond. A300 wing profile and camber did not change from the first to the last airframe. The compound curve there is another Airbus trademark, in fact -- just look even at today's A380 and you'll find it. But only if you look from a certain narrow set of angles -- it's quite subtle. I don';t have the kit in front of me, but I think Airfix doesn't represent it as it would have meant paying attention to practically microns in that area. Neither does Revell on the Beluga, I think. Not sure it can be added by sculpting the kit, either, without doing more harm than good. I know I for one can't add it, being totally cack-handed... Didn't know that! Thank you!

Hold on! Not sure what the fillet is supposed to be about, but could it be you are talking of... Most but the very, very, very earliest A300B2s (like some Air France machines) and all B4s had a Krueger flap where the wing leading edge meets the fuselage. That flap made such a huge difference in payload uplift, it became an enduring Airbus trademark extending to the A310 and onwards. (I seem to recall it might have been an option, with fitted aircraft receiving a K in the designation -- B2K, B4K. (They were often called "the hot-and-high B4K-200"...) Soon enough, though, I think it became essentially standard fit.) Now, the Krueger flap in question was a two-piece affair. One part hinged forward from the lower wing surface at the very leading edge (you can see it retracted in the Google images link above). Another part extended sideways from the fuselage (that part had no sweep). The two met at an angle. It all looked rather awkward, Heath-Robinsonian even. But it worked... In fact, it did rather look like a sort of angular fairing. Could this be what you mean? The flap was usually left deployed during turnrounds, being retracted when the aeroplane was overnighted or otherwise resting for longer than an hour or so. (It was also retracted when the aeroplane was climbing out and left flush until it was about to land.) Now, the Airfix A300 kit is really quite wonderful, or at least quite workmanlike. But it doesn't really have the Krueger flap, because it follows drawings of the "Air-Bus A300B" released sometime in 1972 and appeared at Woolworths (remember?) in, I think, late spring 1974 -- just as the odd 1/1 scale Air France example appeared in the skies overhead instead of the scheduled 727-200 or Caravelle (whose Airfix portraits were also plentifully available at Woolworths, at outrageous prices of coming up to a pound!)... The flap appeared some months after Air France service entry, or maybe even in 1975... Now, the Revell Airbus Beluga has the Krueger flap! It is drawn-in, as it were: a squiggly and rather odd-looking set of fuselage skin engravings just by the forward end of the wing leading edge. --- Oh, and another thing altogether -- the Iberia A300B4s were, alongside the SAS ones and a small handful of others (MAS, China Air Lines of Taiwan, and err-r-r... well, that's it, I think) Pratt & Whitney JT9 powered. Braz does a rather nice JT9. Just mentioning... I'd love to see the result of your project!

"This is the dichotomy I am faced with ..." Thomo, two points: 1. BEA and Olympic had an interchange agreement whereby some of the Olympic fleet wore BEA Black cheatlines and Olympic blue tails some of the time. Yet others had all-Olympic blue. (The opposite: BAE having Olympic blue cheatlines, is not known to have happened as far as I know. Truth be known, BEA owned all the aeroplanes and Olympic merely operated them on dry [mostly] lease.) 2. In the 1960s, the stranglehold designers had on corporate identity (in terms of precise colour, typographical, and layout specifications) was not as marked as it became later. I remember seeing Olympic and (even BOAC) aircraft painted up in what appeared sun bleached mid-blue, others in practically black blue, yet others in-between. Even today's best digital cameras can yield different blues as the colour of daylight changes, let alone any 50-60-year old reference. Upshot is, go with your gut feeling. Don't worry, be happy