EricP

That's too bad, Jonathan, I was quite keen to see this done, I've flown on HS-TAN several times as A300s were formerly heavily used on the SIN-BKK route which I flew a lot. I could not complete my build either, and will be asking the mods' for the go-ahead to move the build to KUTA where it could get done rather than go back on the shelf. Thanks for doing this build, you've provided the inspiration for others (including me) to tackle this ... I was going to go the easy route by marrying the Airfix A300B4 fuselage and Revell Beluga wings, and conveniently ignore the rear fuselage differences, but you've shown that it's not an impossible task ... just a bit more elbow grease and reinforcement needed! Eric

I won't be able to finish this, I'm afraid ... I can rush it, but I'll likely just mess it up (more). At this point, it looks like this: Markings (a bit undersized) are from a Hasegawa A300 kit (1:200 scale!).Fuselage stripes were masked and painted as previously posted, and the tail decal applied on the yellow tail. After that's dried, I put on a layer of Future, and when that's dried as well, I masked the logo with a masking fluid. BTW, too late, I realized that I have a set of decals (maybe Flightpath) for a 1:144 Singapore Airlines A300/A310 that would have worked better for this ... c'est la vie. Then it sat for a week and a half while I went on vacation, and when I came back, I masked the fuselage and airbrushed dark blue (Tamiya X-3 Royal Blue) over the tail. After the paint cured (overnight), I carefully peeled off the masking fluid and it was pretty much spot on, with only minor touch-ups needed. I also put on the fuselage titles (again from the Hasegawa decal), and windshield decal (NOT from the Hasegawa decal ... I took part of the Welsh Models Royal Air Maroc decal sheet for this). Wheels were put on cocktail sticks and airbrushed Matt Aluminum And this is a pic of the rest of the bits that need to go on ... I still need to drill the resin engines for pins to attach to the wings, paint the tyres, and attach the various bits and bobs. Fuselage windows will come from the outlines in the Welsh decal sheet (that long strip in the pic just below the fuselage)... I'll need to count windows to ensure I get them correct, as well as the doors (likely to come from the Hasegawa decal again, they're in the right colors) ... I'm just missing one emergency exit door per side, so I may need to cannibalize another Hasegawa A300 kit just for that one, or attempt to mask and spray the outline. Rushing to complete it will not be good, it's a hobby after all. I'm also planning to use pins for the undercarriage to make them removable, so that storage will be easier (those spindly gear legs will snap easily in a moving box). With the moderators' indulgence, I'd like to move this to KUTA ... given a few more weeks, I'll be able to finish it. And thanks to all who are reading this thread, particularly those who have contributed ideas and encouragement, this has been a fun GB even though I could not finish it in time.

Good guess, kev1n ... I guess my avatar is a dead giveaway. I thought I'd do something funky with this as it's not that accurate, and I'm not using the Guido decals on it. Good place to use the Welsh engines that are not as detailed as the Bra.Z ones. I've masked the leading edge slats as well as some overspray spots that I need to touch up, and gave them a thin coat of Future/Klear to prevent paint bleed. Should be able to shoot the silver tomorrow.

More progress ... first, I mummified the fuselage, and shot several coats of yellow. You can't really tell where the masked bits are as the tape's about the same color: Next, selective patches were removed, and the just-sprayed yellow bits masked, and dark blue sprayed on ... this is just before the airbrush went into action: Once the blue had dried a bit, about 30 min, the masking tape was carefully removed, et voila! It's far from done, but anyone care to guess the livery? As far as I know, there are no decals made for it in 1/144 scale (or any other scale for that matter), considering that only 4 aircraft went into service ... registrations ending in K, L, M and N! The flap track fairings / canoes went on at this time as well, I left them off as I didn't want to mask around them for the Coroguard.

Quick update, no pics, unfortunately. Been a bit slow going on this, held back by work and home stuff, e.g. this weekend I set up a couple of IP cameras and a Digital Video Recorder that can hold 24x7 CCTV footage for a month, plus a mirrored RAID box to store precious photos of the kids taken since they were born. Plus images from airliner spotting trips Also had a few issues with the build ... After the last update, I masked the fuselage to spray the wings Canadian Voodoo Grey, then masked the wings to spray grey coroguard, and it turned out that I had not cleaned the mold release off as well as I should have ... when I gently pulled the Tamiya tape off, a few chunks of paint came off all the way to bare plastic. So I had to carefully mask and spray where the bits ripped out. The fuselage needed some sanding down (got a bit heavy handed with the white spray), so I re-sprayed some areas that had grey showing through. The engines are built and got an initial coat of Canadian Voodoo Grey, I sprayed it on without a primer to see how well it works, so far it's "sticking". The GB's over Dec 30th, but I only have about 1.5 weeks' building time left due to vacations, so I'd better get a move on.

Very nicely done, John! Thanks to you, I had a flash of nostalgia ... I loved flying in F27s back in the late 1970s (no jets where I lived at the time). The smell of the cabin (very different from today's stale air from long haul jets, no matter which airline), the sound of the Darts, the view of the main undercarriage retracting and extending ...

Immaculate!

Nice! Interesting that you sprayed the entire fuselage grey, I can see it will help when it comes to seamwork later (not sure if that's your intent). I've only tried the "black-marker-around-outline" trick.

Looks good, Gary! Was it a construction issue that created the "engines-on-the-ground" problem, or kit engineering? I haven't heard of this from other online reviews, but perhaps others have fixed it without commenting about it ... I have several copies of this kit and will watch out for this when I eventually start on them. Cheers, Eric

Very nice! Those decals look great, no "bleeding through" with all that red behind it!

Nice one, Gary, I got a bunch of this exact kit, bagged (got them from Clint Groves when he had a sale, that was many many years ago). I like the detail decal and photoetched antennae that came with it ... I still haven't gotten round to ordering the Westpac Sam's Town I & II and the one many had been waiting for a while ... Stardust! But I digress, I'm looking forward to this build. I even have 2 tins of the correct yellow from Daco, hopefully they're still ok after sitting there for years!

Mini-update, had not done much in the last few weeks. I'd like to blame my CO2 regulator which conked out on me after about 15 years (instead of being able to regulate pressure across a pretty broad range, from "Hurricane" to "Baby's Breath", I now get 2 states ... "On" and "Off" ) ... but I cannot do that as I also have a micro-valve on my airbrush quick-release that does the same thing. After the last update, what I'd done was to putty the gaps left after I got the wings attached at the right angle: Tamiya's putty, applied with a putty tool that I picked up recently in a hobby shop in Taipei, and smoothed with nail polish remover on a q-tip (a lot of q-tips, actually), did the trick. This pic is halfway through the smoothing process: I next looked at the engines ... the aircraft I intend to build uses PW2000s, so as I had mentioned, I mail-ordered a set of Bra.Z engines from Hannants. They come with very good detail, though there are some tiny air bubbles, nothing a coat of Mr Surfacer will not fix: However, given the fact that this kit is not all that accurate, I also looked at the resin engines that came with the Welsh kit: Simplified detail (e.g. solid exhaust outlets), but I like the fan faces better. Compared side-by-side: I'll use the Welsh engines, and drill out the hot section exhaust. I also gave the model a coat of Mr Surfacer 1000 (out of a jar, thinned with Mr Color Levelling Thinner, I think it's just the regular thinner with a bit of retarder): After that's dried and checked for issues, I masked the wings and put on several coats of Tamiya acrylic white, thinned with Mr Color Leveling Thinner again: Next step is to put on the flap track fairings and fit the engines before they all get a coat of Canadian Voodoo Grey, then the livery.

If you're not going for historical accuracy, you could perhaps modify the decals to give you the registration F-UGLY

@Foxbat,my vote goes to the IL86 too.

Thanks for the encouragement, Kevin, I don't think I'm prepared to put in the work to fix it, not when there's an accurate Welsh kit waiting in the wings. I'll still finish this, but I'm going to do something a bit different with it ... stay tuned.

Gee, you guys are an encouraging lot, aren't you? Makes me re-think the idea of using the precious Guido decals on this monstrosity ... and as I've donated both sets of my AA decals, I may raid the Welsh kit for Royal Air Maroc decals to use on this beast. The Guido decals can then go onto the more deserving Welsh kit.

There's slight progress, but not pic-worthy ... got the wings on, but the built-in "dihedral" is atrocious, so I had to crack them again at the joint, get them to some semblance of reality, glue them in with gaps, then after a couple of nights for the glue to set, I've just gotten some Tamiya putty in. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed as I suspect that it may not be "square" with the vertical tail, I'll check once the putty's dried a bit. Reminds me why this was a shelf queen to start with ... next 757 I build will be the Welsh kit in the stash. On a brighter note, the BraZ PW2000s I ordered from Hannants came in (together with a bunch of other resin that happened to be on sale ... a small order ballooned to something close to 100 quid I think!). Did you get your decals yet, Kevin? Bradley sent me a note that he's received his.

Replied to your PM, Bradley. Decals will be in the post same time as kev1n's.

@kev1n, Not going to worry about the shape of the nose, my main challenge is getting it built after all these years! Got your PM, decal will be on the way sometime middle of next week.

Happy to send them to a deserving home, kev1n, PM me your address. Bradley, I have another set, PM me your address as well. I think I know what I'm in for with this kit, I've already managed to get the clear cockpit-fuselage transition done to my satisfaction (though I have not primered it yet to see if there are any issues), the next big one will be the wing-fuselage joint.

With one of the moderators' kind permission, I'd like to enter a shelf queen to this GB. He took pity on it as it's been gathering dust for nigh on 5 years ... it's the AA version of the Minicraft B757. Before I stuck it on the shelf of doom, I had sanded and polished the fuselage (in preparation for the NMF finish of the AA livery), and had assembled the wings as well. However, I mucked up the engine pods and lost interest ... This time round, I will not use the AA livery ... I figured it's a good chance to use Guido's Delta 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics decals which I had stashed away a while ago, and it'll go well with some of the other colorful liveries being built in this GB, e.g. Mish's Bangkok Air A320. And it's also the 10th year anniversary of that event, so I guess it's the right time to use the decals! The engines on the kit are not correct (RR rather than the PW2000 that Delta uses), so I've put in an order with Hannants for a set of the nice Bra.Z resin engines.

Argh, missed them when they were in stock ... even the Welsh 747SPs are hard to find nowadays. I guess I'll need to stick to 1/200. Looking forward to following your build!

Tom, where will you find 1/144 RR RB211 engines for the QF livery? Haven't seen them for sale for a long time ...

Very nice, Ray, I'll also be closely following this build thread. I'll be keen to see the painting of the blue demarcation on the fuselage of -INJ, I have the same decals in 1/200 scale with a Hasegawa kit waiting in the wings for it BTW, Flying Colors' "Mega Ark" titles are a bit funky, but it will be difficult to fix as the font's a bit unusual. Liveries Unlimited got it spot on, but I only know of the 1/200 scale sheet.

You're most welcome! I'll be following this thread, the a/c's kinda "local" for me, I've photographed it a couple of times on the ramp at Bangkok's Don Muang airport before they closed it. It's too bad that the decals are OOP, I'll scour eBay to look for it, and maybe ask around the forums.