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Caravelle


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First up from me in this GB will be the Caravelle, originally from 1961. This is a 1995 boxing. Pretty sure I've built one of these before - I built most of the Airfix airliners back in the 80s, with a few exceptions - I've never built the Vanguard, 747 or Concorde but I think I built all the others.

 

Airfix Caravelle

 

Sprue shots, plus the decals I'll be using - 26 decals for a Swissair Caravelle III:

Airfix Caravelle

 

A pretty simple kit. Nice to see the silvery grey plastic again. I'm going to build it more or less OOB, will just need to fill the windows (the only transparency is for the windscreen - nothing for the passenger windows). I've made a start - fuselage assembled, windows filled and waiting to be sanded down. I'll also remove all the raised detail - as this is 1/144 I don't think I'll rescribe it. Here's how it looks tonight:

 

Airfix Caravelle

 

Probably won't get a lot further than this for a while - I'm in for a busy week at work, then off travelling for a month - I'll get straight back into it when we get back in mid-July.

 

Thanks for looking

Z

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Hello Zebra, this was always a graceful looking aircraft, I recall building quite a few in my yoof!

 

It should look good in the alternative scheme.

 

Ray

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Hi Zebra,

I remember this one - but for all the wrong reasons.  It was one of my childhood 'fails' - but I can't remember why.  Looking forward to catching up on this one in a month or so.

 

Happy Trails,

Steve

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Another Airfix beaut with a bit of French flair shown in for good measure. 

I purchased the April edition of 'Aeroplane' (yes we get ours 2 months later via the slow boat) and it has a good article on the Caravelle. Its in the shops now so may provide a little more incentive to crack on with this one. Having never batted a eye-lid over the type, this article and now your build has peaked my ever expanding interest. 

 

Cheers.. Dave   

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Nice to see this one making an appearance Zebra. I've always liked the look of the Caravelle but never got around to making one. I think that the SABENA scheme was one of the nicest on this aircraft as can be seen here in this Pathe News clip. Looking forward to this one.

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6 hours ago, nimrod54 said:

Nice to see this one making an appearance Zebra. I've always liked the look of the Caravelle but never got around to making one. I think that the SABENA scheme was one of the nicest on this aircraft as can be seen here in this Pathe News clip. Looking forward to this one.

SABENA is a nice scheme. I spent a long time looking at available decals and trying to decide. F-DCAL’s Air Inter it Armee de l’Air decals nearly won. But then the 26 Swissair decals were on special offer last time I put in an order with the big yellow shop!

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Cool. I've  still got one in the very original box for 19?? and Air France decals ( Plus a couple spare sets). Reluctant to do anything with it but do have another built though.  Will look in to see how this one progresses.

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  • 1 month later...

Back from a month in the UK (now no longer known in our house as 'the cold place'. I got a bit of a tan. Wasn't expecting that), having developed a hatred of Dubai airport and rekindled a love of British sausage rolls, and thoroughly jet lagged (the kids were awake at 2am this morning!). So a bit of uncomplicated modelling was called for, and the Caravelle turned out to be ideal.

 

This kit goes together pretty well, particularly considering it was released decades before modern CAD-designed kits came along. So I've got the fuselage together and wings on pretty quickly. I've also sanded down all the raised panel lines. Attaching the little intakes on the fin was probably a mistake - I'm going to have to get decals over them - and the tailplanes have to go over the same decals so won't go on until the end. However the engines are very crude and I've decided to replace them with resin engines from F-RSIN. So this will go back on hold until they arrive. Meanwhile I'll crack on with the Skyvan.

 

Here's how it's looking tonight:

Caravelle WIP

 

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The old Airfix Caravelle is still the most accurate kit of the type in 1/144th scale and stands up well even today. I have several of these kits in my stash with Swissair, SAS and, Sabena decal sheets by F.DCAL and Liveries Unlimited, but whether I get around to them all is another matter.  Alas, no Australian airlines ever had them and don't think any flew there either. I loved see these at Heathrow Airport during my spotting days with my Dad in the '60s.

 

Looking forward to seeing progress with this.

Edited by AMB
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I know what you mean about Dubai Airport - nightmare of a place.  I had the Caravelle as a kid and got no further than getting the fuselage together as I remember.  We used to be treated to an Air France Caravelle coming into Manchester Airport around tea-time everyday back in the mid seventies - lovely looking shape I always thought.

 

I love Melbourne - I've been about 3 or maybe 4 times - for work.  Great city centre and nice to sit by the river with a cold beer - watching those flame thrower things going off every few minutes.

 

Looking forward to more progress soon :goodjob: 

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2 hours ago, BIG X said:

I know what you mean about Dubai Airport - nightmare of a place.  I had the Caravelle as a kid and got no further than getting the fuselage together as I remember.  We used to be treated to an Air France Caravelle coming into Manchester Airport around tea-time everyday back in the mid seventies - lovely looking shape I always thought.

 

I love Melbourne - I've been about 3 or maybe 4 times - for work.  Great city centre and nice to sit by the river with a cold beer - watching those flame thrower things going off every few minutes.

 

Looking forward to more progress soon :goodjob: 

I vaguely remember Caravelles at Manchester - my Dad must have started taking me there some time in the late 70s - but really can't remember which airlines' Caravelles they were! Is suppose they could have been Air France, have a feeling I've seen SAS Caravelles at Manchester as well. If only I'd had a digital SLR back then...

 

Love Melbourne too - never really looked back since I moved here 12 years ago. Took the then 2-year-old to see the flame thrower things at the casino once though, scared the bejesus out of him! 

 

Resin engines have been ordered, hopefully they'll be here soon and I can crack on. Meanwhile jet lag got in the way of any meaningful modelling today, maybe I'll have a good crack at the Skyvan tomorrow.

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On 7/20/2018 at 2:40 PM, AMB said:

The old Airfix Caravelle is still the most accurate kit of the type in 1/144th scale and stands up well even today. I have several of these kits in my stash with Swissair, SAS and, Sabena decal sheets by F.DCAL and Liveries Unlimited, but whether I get around to them all is another matter.  Alas, no Australian airlines ever had them and don't think any flew there either. I loved see these at Heathrow Airport during my spotting days with my Dad in the '60s.

 

Looking forward to seeing progress with this.

It's a pretty decent kit but the nose can stand a bit of reworking.  As Airfix have moulded it the point of the nose is too high and too far back making the poor Caravelle look a chinless wonder.  Comparing the profile of the model's nose to a good side-on photo of the real aircraft will show what I mean.  It's not difficult to fix with some Milliput and a bit of sanding.

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On 7/20/2018 at 11:40 PM, AMB said:

The old Airfix Caravelle is still the most accurate kit of the type in 1/144th scale and stands up well even today. I have several of these kits in my stash with Swissair, SAS and, Sabena decal sheets by F.DCAL and Liveries Unlimited, but whether I get around to them all is another matter.  Alas, no Australian airlines ever had them and don't think any flew there either. I loved see these at Heathrow Airport during my spotting days with my Dad in the '60s.

 

Looking forward to seeing progress with this.

I remember UTA flying them into Sydney in the late Sixties  and Air Caledonie operated one on services to Noumea from Brisbane in Eighties 

Martin H

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I can't ever remember building ANY airliners back in the day.

 

But as with so many other builds on here I can see meself branching out from 1/48 ww2......

 

Shaping up nicely! 👍

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5 hours ago, Lawzer said:

I can't ever remember building ANY airliners back in the day.

 

But as with so many other builds on here I can see meself branching out from 1/48 ww2......

 

Shaping up nicely! 👍

Thanks Lawzer

 

I used to build just about any aircraft I could, didn’t discriminate between airliners and military, so in my first few years of modelling I built a few Airfix airliners - certainly built the VC10, Comet, 1-11, Caravelle, 727 and 737 and there may be others I’ve forgotten about. Later on it became just military but these days my interest is really any and all aircraft and it’s been nice to start building airliners again. I’m finding mixing up the subjects is helping to keep the mojo going, I recommend it!

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F-RSIN engines arrived this week, so these have been attached. Not done an awful lot more though - today has mostly been all about the Skyvan - but since taking this photo I've sprayed it with Mr Surfacer. I think there will be a few things I'll want to clean up tomorrow, but hopefully I'll get some painting done soon.

 

Caravelle WIP

 

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7 hours ago, nimrod54 said:

Great progress bud, the resin engines are a nice replacement. Keep up the good work.

Thanks John. I'm glad I got the engines - worth it for the distinctive exhausts, the Airfix engines just don't look right.

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Started painting today. The aluminium is AK Extreme Metal, over Mr Surfacer grey primer, which I had polished up using micro mesh. Seems to have come out well - I'll be using it again.

 

thanks for looking 

Z

 

Caravelle WIP

 

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A setback tonight. I'd got the white paint on and it was ready for decals, so I started with the cheat line decals. Turns out the decals are no good - very brittle and don't conform to curves at all, even with micro set (which is odd, given these decals were printed by Microscale!). The decals were on special offer at Hannants - perhaps they'd been on the shelf too long.

 

So the Caravelle is on hold while I decide what to do. I'll see what's out there - hopefully I can get hold of something that won't require a complete repaint - whether I can get something in time to finish by the end of the GB is debatable, but I'll see what I can do.

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