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Looking through some old aircraft magazines recently, I came across an article in the May 1977 edition of Aircraft Illustrated about the introduction of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 30 with British Caledonian. The article stated that BCAL had also evaluated the Boeing 747SP, and the proposed long range Lockheed L-1011 500, before eventually settling on the DC-10. The 747SP was ruled of on cost, and the fact that if provided too much capacity for the airline at the time, however the TriStar 500 closely matched BCAL's route requirements and was suitable from both a performance and economic view point. At the time of the evaluation the production of the -500 had not been given the the official go-ahead by Lockheed and as an interim BCAL was offered the TriStar 100, until the new higher performance variant became available, which in turn swung the deal in favour of the DC-10. British Airways became the official launch customer for the TriStar 500 in August 1976, and as they say the rest is history. This got me thinking though - 'what if' BCAL had gone with Lockheed's offering and subsequently became the joint launch customer with B.A.?!? My model depicts what I imagine their second TriStar 'Bravo Mike' might have looked like when delivered to the airline in the spring of 79. Now onto the model - I'll keep this brief. A under engineered, poorly executed, and horrendously over priced excuse of a model. Although I am quite pleased with the end result, it fought me every step of the way. The low point being the unequal lengths of the rear fuselage halves resulting in canyon sized gaps that had to be filled with numerous applications of epoxy resin and much sanding. Try as I might I couldn't completely eliminate the slight step where the tail section meets the main body. The tail and cheatline colours were hand painted with Revell acrylics, with the BCAL titling, golden lions, a/c reg and names taken from the 26decals early BCAL DC-10 scheme sheet.I also used the Nazca decals L-1011 detail sheet , with fuselage and flight deck windows, and some aluminium trim from Authentic decals. I hope you don't mind my little indulgence...now where did I put that Authentic Airliners 747SP?!? halvesvv