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Revell 1/72 Concorde


t15dja

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19 minutes ago, t15dja said:

Whilst I'm awaiting a response from Braz models about what (if anything) they have planned for the front end of the 1/72 Concorde (no response at all as yet), I shall press on with the kit as far as I can. In readiness for that, can anyone advise, please, whether this slightly raised feature that runs along the length of the bottom of the tail section either side of the seam, as seen in the image below, exists on the real Concorde or is it just one more kit issue to deal with?

Thanks in anticipation. 2018-12-05_12-16-21

 

I took some photos of F-BTSD at Le Bourget, and it does not have that raised feature on the underside of the fuselage.  It's a smooth and seamless curve all the way around.

 

Even the access panels are not as noticeable as the moulding suggests:

 

IMG_1632

 

Another thing to note is the extension of the tail wheel, which on the kit does not sit as far away from the fuselage when it is installed.  On the kit, the tyres are more or less level with the doors.

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25 minutes ago, Matt_ said:

With all this kit's failings, I think you may as well just scratch the whole thing

As the man said.... I've started so I'll finish!

Somewhere amongst this jumble of twisted and mis-moulded plastic a beautiful Concorde is just waiting to escape!

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10 minutes ago, Kirk said:

...except that despite superficial appearance, the fuselage cross section is not circular. 

 

The kit fuselage is definitely egg-shaped in cross section when the two halves are joined....don't know if that's representative of the real thing?

Edited by t15dja
typo
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3 minutes ago, t15dja said:

The kit fuselage is definitely egg-shaped in cross section when the two halves are joined....don't know if that's representative of the real thing?

 

The cross-section is kind of upside-down egg-shaped:

 

Concordev1.0.png

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9 minutes ago, t15dja said:

 

Somewhere amongst this jumble of twisted and mis-moulded plastic a beautiful Concorde is just waiting to escape!

 

If it's anything like your A380, it's going to be stunning!

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I've got the very wonderful Frederic Beniada book which has a number of shots of the fuselage sections during assembly. Indeed the cabin area is pretty much ovoid in cross section for its entire length, but is integral with the inboard wing box that intersects it. The outer sections of the wings are a separate structure if I remember correctly. Though ultimately its not going to make any difference, this was one of the difficult decisions that faced the team that moved the Brooklands Concorde from Filton I believe. Simply disassembling the wings would mean that it was too wide to make it along the M4 so they cut the wing boxes, meaning that it would be technically impossible to ever return that one to flight. Politics has done the same to all the other surviving aircraft without the need for a saw.

 

I think it is fair to say that historically Airfix were pretty good at making an accurate representation of the shapes of the aircraft they modelled, even when the detail or quality of moulding was less good. Sadly the same can't be said for this one. [Please Airfix, it has to be time to atone and give us a better starting point! :pray:]

 

That's not to take anything from @t15dja's build - and I don't doubt it will be first class (if you'll forgive the pun). It just means that there are a lot of little problems to solve to make the end result look quite as it should. Or you can just leave them alone and build the damn thing of course. :)

 

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I'm not sure this kit will ever be discontinued.....it just gets rested for a while then passed on. It'll probably be Italeri's turn next!

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I've only used the instrument panel decals so far but the rest of the sheet looks superb.

The BA livery decals on the Revell A380 I did recently were also brilliant and went down extremely well,  especially considering how big some of them were and the curves they needed to conform to. 

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Most certainly is....thanks!

Other interesting Concorde stuff there too, including a video of the nose droop process.

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I've had no response at all from Braz models to my two emails asking what plans, if any, they have for this kit. Is it just me....has anyone else had any responses to enquiries from Braz models?

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I just watched a documentary on BBC Four, Concorde: A Supersonic Story.

 

No idea how old this documentary is, it seems to be fairly recent since one of the interviewees referred to Brexit...

 

It inspired my to buy my third 1:72 kit... 

 

How are you getting on with the build?

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4 minutes ago, neilg said:

just watched a documentary on BBC Four, Concorde: A Supersonic Story.

Ditto, quite good I thought and had me looking up Concorde kits on eBay.  

 

Dennis

 

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11 hours ago, neilg said:

I just watched a documentary on BBC Four, Concorde: A Supersonic Story.

 

No idea how old this documentary is, it seems to be fairly recent since one of the interviewees referred to Brexit...

Thanks Neil - according to IMDB it's a 2017 documentary so worth a watch.

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That Concorde program is being repeated in the UK on BBC 4 HD on Tuesday 18 December at 2.35am. Its also available on BBC 4 HD On Demand. I didn't catch it first time around so I've downloaded it to watch later.

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11 hours ago, neilg said:

 

How are you getting on with the build?

Hi neilg, as you may recall I'd sent emails to Braz models enquiring as to what (if anything) they have planned for the front end of the 1/72 Concorde. Despite follow-ups I've had no response at all so I think I'm going to have abandon that plan (and Braz Models!) and use the kit parts, although I may have to write to that nice Mr Revell and request some replacements due to warpage and mis-moulds. In the meantime I've been working steadily on the fuselage and wings...."steadily" being the operative word due to numerous interruptions at the moment. I will post up some progress photos asap.

 

Where did you get your 1/72 Concorde from? There are just a few very expensive examples on ebay, and what livery will you be doing it in this time?

 

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Yes, I remember, sorry you haven't been able to make any progress on that front.

 

Which parts are warped?  

I bought mine on ebay.  It's the Airfix offering, still factory-sealed.  It was £49.99 buy it now, so I thought why not.

 

This time, I will be doing it in Landor.  I really like the look of this livery, on all of the British Airways fleet, but it looks especially elegant on Concorde I think.

 

The first build I made of this kit was an Airfix kit. and I wanted it to be in Landor.  I built it a few years ago, so the kit was already old, and the box had already been opened.  Despite its age, it had no missing parts and none of the parts were warped.

 

I thought I should apply the red cheatline first, before the tail decals, in case I messed up the alignment - then I would have been able to abandon the Landor livery and apply the Chatham decals without too much of a problem.  I wouldn't have had to scrape off the tail decals, and paint the vertical stabilizer again (the Landor version requires the rudder actuator fairing on one side to be painted blue, because there is no special blue decal for this part).

 

It turned out that this was a good idea. 

 

I think moisture had got to the decals during its time in storage, because when I tried to apply the decals, they disintegrated as soon as they hit the water.  Some of the fragments slid off the backing sheet easily, and other fragments stayed stuck.  When I tried to apply a bit of force to free them, they disintegrated even more.

 

I had experienced disintegrating decals before, on 1:144 kits, but it was easy to put the fragments in position and align the pieces so it looked like they were still a single piece.

 

But with this one, where one section of the red stripe broke into hundreds of fragments, it was just impossible on a scale this big.

 

So I gave up, and went with the Chatham scheme, which looked good at the time, but in comparison to the Revell decals, the decals were completely incorrect.  The stylized Speedbird ribbons were the wrong size, had no shading, and the tail decals were solid block colours, instead of the feathered colours towards the rudder.  I think only one of the Concorde fleet had solid colours on the tail:

 

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:G-BOAD_(7513683612).jpg

 

The Revell decals were much more accurate, but there was no Landor option, which is a shame.

 

Looking forward to the pictures!

 

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