Revell L-1011 Tristar Court Line G-BAAA 'halcyon days'

[phil1]

Revell L-1011 Tristar Court Line G-BAAA 'halcyon days'

Kit - Revell

Decals - 26 decals and authentic airliners for cockpit and windows

Modifications -

1. tail engine re-designed

2. area below rudder extended and corrected

3. trench cargo doors filled and sanded

4. nose reshaped 

 

 

 

thanks for looking!

 

[Viking]

Great to see so many Tristars making an appearance here. Those mods make a real difference to the old Revell kit an I jsut love that colour scheme!

 

Cheers

 

John

[Turbofan]

Hi Phil,

Wow this brings some colour to your collection! I wish I'd seen these Court Line aircraft back in the day.

Beautiful smooth finish, is that straight from the can/airbrush or did you have to polish it?

For me the biggest improvement is the work you've done around the nose to get the real TriStar look, something that is lacking on both the Revell and Airfix models. Along with the AA windows it really looks realistic.

I hate to point it out but the logo on the right side of the tail is round the wrong way. Hopefully it's not too late to soak it in some Micro Set and refloat it?

Cheers,

Ian

Edited September 6, 2017 by Turbofan

[picard]

Halcyon days indeed. A fantastic build of a wonderful speed bird, and brings back a lot of childhood fabulous memories travelling with Court Line way back in the day. 

My first visit to a flight deck in flight, and the kid's gift pack were brilliant as well I seem to remember,  I wonder how much those would be now pristine and sealed on evilbay? 

Nice one. Cheers

[Skodadriver]

Excellent result Phil, well done. I followed the WIP with interest and the finished model is every bit as good as I'd expected from all your hard work.

 

Dave G

[phil1]

2 hours ago, Turbofan said:

Hi Phil,

Wow this brings some colour to your collection! I wish I'd seen these Court Line aircraft back in the day.

Beautiful smooth finish, is that straight from the can/airbrush or did you have to polish it?

For me the biggest improvement is the work you've done around the nose to get the real TriStar look, something that is lacking on both the Revell and Airfix models. Along with the AA windows it really looks realistic.

I hate to point it out but the logo on the right side of the tail is round the wrong way. Hopefully it's not too late to soak it in some Micro Set and refloat it?

Cheers,

Ian

nooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!! i've just realized myself....man-vegetables! - i'll see what i can do, thanks for pointing that out. i may have to buy another set eventually as the transfers are quite brittle and i can see it coming off in a hundred bits.

 its an airbrush finish buffed up with novus scratch remover, gets a lovely finish but needs plenty if coats of paint down before the buff. 

The kit is basically crap (but not as bad as airfix i'm led to believe) but the plastic is quite thick which helps with the alterations

[michael301757]

Thats really nice, spent many happy hours at Luton watching these, they were great times, great job.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             Cheers Michael.

[Vinnie]

Superb build, well done. That was the very plane I had my first ever flight on. Luton to Gerona if memory serves. Showing my age now.

[Alpha Delta 210]

Great-looking model of a great-looking aeroplane. 

[gazza l]

Another stunning Tristar, she looks great. Interesting livery I don't think I've ever seen it before.

 

gazza l

[Ridgeline]

So shiny!

 

Are the horizontal parts red underneath? I've never seen that before!

[Vinnie]

1 hour ago, gazza l said:

Another stunning Tristar, she looks great. Interesting livery I don't think I've ever seen it before.

 

gazza l

Gazza, you can't be as old as me. Court Line and Laker opened up airline travel for those that couldn't afford the likes of BA, Pan Am etc. They all had beautiful liveries to encourage low-cost travel. I still have my ticket stubs for our 'Halcyon Days' package. £35 each including hotel, dinner and breakfast. Food was **** but loved that week on the Costa Brava. 

[stevehnz]

A lovely piece of modelling on a very attractive subject even if those colours are everso 70s, what were we thinking of back then. I've just read Court line up on Wikipedia, really interesting, back then I was too busy chasing girls & drinking beer to be aware of such happenings a world away though of course I recall the oil shock, carless days etc. I recall my burnt orange 33" flares too.  Yeeurch.

Steve.

Edited September 8, 2017 by stevehnz
Spelling

[cngaero]

What an attractive scheme and beautifully applied.

Great modelling indeed.

Court Line certainly had no fear of using colours on their aircraft.

[Britman]

Really nice, pink one next.?

[stevej60]

Excellent,great scheme beautifully done too!

[Alex1978]

A piece of art.

This is one of the most colorful TriStars and the finish is outstanding.Superb job on the modifications too.

[stringbag]

Lovely finish you have achieved there Phil. Hard to recognize the old Revell kit under all that shine.

 

Chris.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

nice to see another gem of a build finished Phil

[DennisTheBear]

That is beautiful! Very nicely done!

 

On 9/8/2017 at 9:03 AM, stevehnz said:

A lovely piece of modelling on a very attractive subject even if those colours are everso 70s...back then I was too busy chasing girls & drinking beer to be aware of such happenings a world away though of course I recall the oil shock, carless days etc. I recall my burnt orange 33" flares too.  Yeeurch.

Steve.

Now there is an interesting idea for a large scale figure diorama.

 

DennisTheBear

[stevehnz]

That would be far far too much of a not very nice thing ( in retrospect) Thought we were as cool as at the time. What were we thinking???

Steve.

[FortyEighter]

Superb work 

[Graham In Oz]

This is really nice! I just joined the site (first post) because I saw this model here and want to build one of my own. I have not built a model since 1977, though I had reached a fairish sort of standard back then. A TriStar in Court livery was one of my earliest models, age 10, because I used to see these aircraft flying out from Luton and over my house and school (I lived in Hemel at the time). The model is long gone, along with Court, but I remember fondly cycling up to Luton to watch these wonderful planes in '73. My Court model was terrible - brush painted with no proper colour references, no care for the dust it picked up, and all the markings and cheat lines hand painted. As a 10yo I loved it, but it was shocking as you can imagine.

 

Anyway, I'm going to give it another go, 45 years on. These days I have far higher standards! I have acquired the Airfix TriStar which was also the kit I originally built, and the 26 Decals sheets for both Days and Breeze. I'll probably just build Days and see how it goes though. I imagine there have been a few developments in the world of modelling since those days, and I have a few questions. If anyone would like to chip in with advice, I'm all ears.

 

First, colour references. I'd like to ask the original poster what paints he used and what references he used for colours? The images to be found online from those days show such colour variations they're not a very reliable standard to go by. The sheet that comes with the 26 Decals is a colour photocopy so not really a reliable reference there. I have the book 'Colours In The Sky' which reproduces some paint guide sheets from Lockheed on the inside covers, but these are just fragments. But it would suggest that such references exist. Maybe I should write to Lockheed?

 

The other question I have regarding colours is the upper wing surfaces. My recollection is that these were the light yellow, but the 26 Decals sheets says white, and that has been followed by modellers too. My memory may be faulty, or it may be that I never saw the upper surfaces, and always just assumed yellow - the geometry of the plane makes them almost impossible to see from ground level, and I can't find any photos or video that conclusively shows the upper surfaces either. I see one response here from someone who used to work for Court on these planes - maybe he will recall? (The Gemini Jets diecast model in Court livery has the upper wing surfaces in the mid-orange colour, further adding to the confusion).

 

One of the problems back in the day was dealing with the windows. If a decal covered them, it had to be painted, applied and pierced before fitting the clear transparencies, or else leave the transparencies out altogether. I recall there was a product to 'reglaze' the window apertures from the outside after assembly - is that still used? With the Court livery it's less of a problem because no decal covers the windows. I'm thinking I could airbrush the window area before assembling the fuselage halves, fit the transparencies and then keep the window line masked off for the rest of the build. What do you think? The 26 Decals come with decals for the windows - is that the usual solution to this these days?

 

And given the trouble the OP had with the decals - no wonder given the complex curves they have to follow - I'm wondering how things have changed in 40 years. Are there products to soften and seal the decals? If someone would like to bring me up to date with the state of the art I'd be grateful - I want to do the best I can.

 

Finally, another thing that used to be less than satisfactory 'back in the day' was painting natural metal surfaces. The basic old Humbrol Silver paint never looked correct. So I'm wondering what products might now exist to give a really bright natural metal finish.

 

Any and all responses received with thanks!

 

cheers, G.

 

P.S. Should I take this to another thread? Maybe once my build is underway/finished...

[Eric Mc]

On 9/8/2017 at 00:03, stevehnz said:

A lovely piece of modelling on a very attractive subject even if those colours are everso 70s, what were we thinking of back then. I've just read Court line up on Wikipedia, really interesting, back then I was too busy chasing girls & drinking beer to be aware of such happenings a world away though of course I recall the oil shock, carless days etc. I recall my burnt orange 33" flares too.  Yeeurch.

Steve.

I never got to see the two Tristars for real - but their Super 1-11s were a common sight at Dublin Airport operating charters - mainly to Spain - for Irish IT IInclusive Tour) coompanies. The UK holidays were operated by Clarksons - who shared the same stylised "C" logo.

 

They certainly were gaudy colours - partly inspired by the colour scheme adopted by Braniff in the US. I actually saw the last Court flight arrive in Dublin. A few days later the airline went out of business.

[Alex1978]

7 hours ago, Graham In Oz said:

This is really nice! I just joined the site (first post) because I saw this model here and want to build one of my own. I have not built a model since 1977, though I had reached a fairish sort of standard back then. A TriStar in Court livery was one of my earliest models, age 10, because I used to see these aircraft flying out from Luton and over my house and school (I lived in Hemel at the time). The model is long gone, along with Court, but I remember fondly cycling up to Luton to watch these wonderful planes in '73. My Court model was terrible - brush painted with no proper colour references, no care for the dust it picked up, and all the markings and cheat lines hand painted. As a 10yo I loved it, but it was shocking as you can imagine.

 

Anyway, I'm going to give it another go, 45 years on. These days I have far higher standards! I have acquired the Airfix TriStar which was also the kit I originally built, and the 26 Decals sheets for both Days and Breeze. I'll probably just build Days and see how it goes though. I imagine there have been a few developments in the world of modelling since those days, and I have a few questions. If anyone would like to chip in with advice, I'm all ears.

 

First, colour references. I'd like to ask the original poster what paints he used and what references he used for colours? The images to be found online from those days show such colour variations they're not a very reliable standard to go by. The sheet that comes with the 26 Decals is a colour photocopy so not really a reliable reference there. I have the book 'Colours In The Sky' which reproduces some paint guide sheets from Lockheed on the inside covers, but these are just fragments. But it would suggest that such references exist. Maybe I should write to Lockheed?

 

The other question I have regarding colours is the upper wing surfaces. My recollection is that these were the light yellow, but the 26 Decals sheets says white, and that has been followed by modellers too. My memory may be faulty, or it may be that I never saw the upper surfaces, and always just assumed yellow - the geometry of the plane makes them almost impossible to see from ground level, and I can't find any photos or video that conclusively shows the upper surfaces either. I see one response here from someone who used to work for Court on these planes - maybe he will recall? (The Gemini Jets diecast model in Court livery has the upper wing surfaces in the mid-orange colour, further adding to the confusion).

 

One of the problems back in the day was dealing with the windows. If a decal covered them, it had to be painted, applied and pierced before fitting the clear transparencies, or else leave the transparencies out altogether. I recall there was a product to 'reglaze' the window apertures from the outside after assembly - is that still used? With the Court livery it's less of a problem because no decal covers the windows. I'm thinking I could airbrush the window area before assembling the fuselage halves, fit the transparencies and then keep the window line masked off for the rest of the build. What do you think? The 26 Decals come with decals for the windows - is that the usual solution to this these days?

 

And given the trouble the OP had with the decals - no wonder given the complex curves they have to follow - I'm wondering how things have changed in 40 years. Are there products to soften and seal the decals? If someone would like to bring me up to date with the state of the art I'd be grateful - I want to do the best I can.

 

Finally, another thing that used to be less than satisfactory 'back in the day' was painting natural metal surfaces. The basic old Humbrol Silver paint never looked correct. So I'm wondering what products might now exist to give a really bright natural metal finish.

 

Any and all responses received with thanks!

 

cheers, G.

 

P.S. Should I take this to another thread? Maybe once my build is underway/finished...

There are many options out there these days.Many aftermarket items to build up your model to your liking.

As for the window options,you can either close them with putty and sand them flush,using window decals afterwards,or leave them open/clear.If you wish your windows clearI would suggest that you omit the kits transparencies and fill the windows after paint and decaling with Microscale Klear or other white glue that clears after drying.If you wish to use window decals,I would recommend the window decals from authentic airliners. www.authentic-airliners.de .

They feature passengers in the windows and pilots,giving the model a really nice depth.

For metallic painting,there are many options in colour brands.I use Testors and Gunze ,sometimes also Revell enamel paints.You can also use spray cans such as Tamyia or what there is available in your place Maybe some fellow modellers can give more advice/input.

For best results use an airbrush or spraycans but as always,every modeller has his way on how to paint the model.

 

If I remember correctly the Court Line aircrafts had white upper wings with natural metal leading edges and pink/yellow undersides (TriStar) with the front esges being natural metal.I guess Phil who built this wonderful TriStar csn give you more  details to painting the aircraft.

I hope my explanations are helpful to you and I wish you a happy build.

 

Edited March 5, 2018 by Alex1978