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Revell's old widebodies (A330 and A340) are rare models. Unless they are for sale on eBay for an exorbitant amount of money. As a model maker, my initial concept was to have in my model collection, at least 1 model of each plane, either Boeing or Airbus family. But for lack of kits, this goal was kinda difficult. The adventure of finding an A340 at an affordable price was a difficult task, but not an impossible one. It was still 2021, and in one morning I decided to spontaneously start looking for Revell models that could be for sale on a Portuguese second-hand shopping site. Out of the sudden, I came across an ad for an old Revell A340 for sale. As the seller was close by, I soon said I would buy the model and we set up a meeting to do the business. I bought the kit for only €20, when I had already seen the same kit for sale for €90 plus the cost of shipping on eBay. I was indeed a lucky bird! The box was still the original, but it already showed the years passing through it, with some duct tape corrections in the corners. The sticker with the price (in German marks) was still in the box, which confirmed what the seller had told me: that he had bought it in Germany, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 90's. I started to open and inspect the kit and quickly realized that a wing was missing. I panicked and thought I had burned a €20 note. Without the wing it wouldn't even be worth trying to assemble the kit. I contacted the seller and he apologised and said he would look for the missing wing at home. After a couple of hours I got a call saying that he hadn't found the wing, but that was no problem, he would refund me. Conclusion. This kit was like a gift. The next task was to find a wing for the plane. I sent an email to Revell, who replied that they no longer manufacture parts for the kit in specific. I had no other solution but to ask my modeler friends for help. I contacted an Austrian friend, and he told me he had the wing, because at the time he was converting his kit from an A340-300 to an A340-600. Lucky me (again)! I could start the kit now. I waited for a more favourable time to start the assembly, but I decided to start making the first parts and then in the painting phase, joining my other planes, so that they are all more or less in the same phase.The paper of the instructions was already yellowed for being so old, and it is curious to see that Revell's graphics have only recently changed. After having done a quick reading of how and what this project would be like, I officially started the assembly. I started with the main fuselage, covering the windows' holes. This time, I decided not to use Revell's Plasto entirely, but plastic putty instead, and use only Plasto on windows that effectively need to disappear to comply with the airline's layout. As a rule, I don't worry too much if the window holes are 100% filled because they will be covered by decals later on. With this, I just want to leave a surface for them to settle in the last stages of the process. After the windows I went to the emergency exits. The A340 as a rule has emergency exits number 3 narrower than the others. On the A340 that I'm going to do, this is exactly what happens, so with a 600-grit sandpaper I completely eliminated the emergency exits and reduced the size of the rain gutter. The major work on the fuselage was complete. According to Revell's instructions, we start with the landing gear. As a rule, I like to take care of the landing gears at the end, so they don't break or something like that. Here it was mandatory to at least mount the central and front landing gear. I confess that for an already quite old mold and kit, the fittings and small pieces all come together like a small puzzle in perfection. On the central and front train I had no big problems and all the parts are super detailed. There was only one small problem with the whole process: Revell printed the instructions wrong and I glued one piece backwards. I only realised later when I saw some pictures. I cut it with a scalpel and re-glued it on the opposite side. I think the mistake is imperceptible, since the piece was in a V shape. I hope everything is uniform in the final paint adjustments! As with any kit I make, I like to collect a lot of pictures for later in the painting and decals stage to make things as they should be, and also to guide me on what colors I should use. The colors for the landing gear bays were one of the hardest I had to choose. In some the photos it looks like it's a mix of gray with oil residues, in other photos a more orange tone. In order not to create more doubts and confusion and after seeing a video on Youtube of this kit, I chose the reference 71.117 “Como Brown” from Vallejo. I confess it got a little darker than I expected, but it served the cause. After the paint dried, I applied Tamiya's black panel line. For the landing gear legs, I opted for 71.064 “Chrome”. The end result was this: The landing gear parts fit in the right places without any major problems. I let it dry so that I could then glue the central section to the main fuselage, so that I could then join the two main parts together. Here the process was not complicated but became complex, as the two main parts of the fuselage assumed a convex behavior, joining in the front and rear parts but moving away in the center. In the end, with the help of a lot of tape, the parts were joined together for a whole and here Revell continues with its characteristic gaps. It took a considerable amount of Plasto, especially in the central section, for the flaws to at least disappear.

This model was a summer love. In July I've bought it to an old guy for just 10€. It was my perfect shot to build a 737 for my collection with the colors of my beloved TAP Air Portugal. In mind that I didn't finished my VARIG yet (and also my DC-10 from Lufthansa), I decided not to loose this opportunity and since it was an easy one to do I've started to do it, since I was alone in town because of the summer holidays. Knowing by hand decals for this plane existed, I've also order them from V1 Decals from Canada. Ben was really helpful and they arrived in one week! As you can see the picture from above, TAP's painting from the 80's/90's is very simple: White with a silver belly. And here is the guy! CE-TEO delivered brand new for TAP in July '83 and seen here in the beautiful Zürich Airport in May '95. This will be the exact plane I will do because it was the only registration available. So hands on work! In a first glimpse, the model looked very easy to do, without much detail. The two parts of the wings were very easy to attach to each other, among cabin and cargo doors. As usual, I've also puttied the windows in order to have that smooth surface to decals sit later on. I first sanded it and later on putty and after it got dried time to sand again. At the first look on this picture after the first sanding part there weren't much gaps on it. After applying the putty in the fuselage and sand it, I've attached the wings and the cockpit windows. Funny fact they broke in two pieces in my hand with the glue on the kit already. So I needed to do it in parts and in the end everything worked out very well. Due to this I needed to also put a bit of plastic putty on the cockpit gap and once again sand. And sand again. The airplane looked way more robust by now and the independent wing parts that alone looked very basic and out of shape started to gain some nice look as a whole now. I put the fuselage a bit aside and I've went to the elevators. Since they had a little gap between them and the fuselage, I've sanded a bit the part that attach them onto the fuselage and after that voila. No more gaps. I've painted them with a light grey (Vallejo 71 046). By the pictures this one was the most similar to the original color. After the grey got dried, I've masked them and I've painted the leading edges with a chromatic color just like I've saw on the pictures! I will repeat the process on the center belly as well in the wings. But first, I will apply the first layer of primary and then moving to the final paintings!

The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar 500 is my dad's favorite aircraft. He flew on it at least 4 times when he was a kid from Portugal towards the South America back in the 80's. This year it will turn 25 years since my dad joined TAP Air Portugal and to celebrate that mark, he decided to make this model that is very special to him. Since he doesn't have time to share his work online, he asked me if I could share it here on his behalf. I didn't mind at all and on this topic I will show you all his work. This job is not mine, but in order to facilitate the writing I will write on the first person, although the credits belong to my dad! The L-1011 operated with TAP Air Portugal between 1983 and 1997 and it played a very important role on the long haul network of the airline through those years. But let's go to the kit itself! The beginning of this project started actually with the decals and by mistake! I was searching online for decals for a 747 and I found by accident the L-1011 ones. Immediately I've order them just in case they ran out of stock. The next step was finding a kit. Thing that probably wouldn't be that easy. But I had time and I wasn't in a rush for starting it so I've waited, until I've found this kit on a bargain on eBay that costed my around 20€. It's a very old kit and the funny fact is that is from the same year as I. Among other models I had in queue I kept the Lockheed stored until this week when I've started to work on it. The instructions were in a very bad shape and the box didn't brought any original British Airways decals but I wouldn't mind that because I had my own ones already. The first part was to glue all main and cargo doors onto the main fuselage, the next step was gluing the cabin windows and assemble the mainframe. This cabin layout is different from the TAP one, which means I have to putty and sand the doors (I would have to do that one way or another). That would be the next step! One thing that always captivated me was the L-1011's S-Duct on Engine 2. It gives the airplane a very own style. I will for sure work this area very much when details and weathering are concerned! And once more, Airfix did a great job with this L-1011 when it comes to fitting and when it comes to details. The back is very well done! Looking forward to continue this model and share the progress with you all!