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British Airways Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde in 1/144 (Revell) positioned nose-down


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This plane doesn't really need an introduction.. But I'll make one anyway. For those of you who don't know what it is; Have you been living under a rock?  

 

The Aerospatiale-BAC Concorde was one of the first and only supersonic passenger airliners to enter service. Its design was unique, graceful and miles ahead of any of its contemporaries and up until now, no airliner has been able to surpass it. The aircraft's economic future was short-lived, though; In the end, only Air France and British Airways ordered it, paid almost entirely for by their respective governments due to low demand, rising fuel costs and high fuel and maintenance expenses. It was retired in 2003 after its only crash in Paris as well as the commercial aviation industry plummeting after the attacks of September 11, 2001. 

 

The kit is Revell's 2005 tooling of the Concorde with BA's Chatham livery, depicting G-BOAG in the 5-degree nose-down takeoff position. 

 

So, before anything else, here are the pics!

 

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The model was painted with Base White 1000 for the white basecoat and the gloss coat was Tamiya X-22 with Mr. Levelling Thinner. The metallic parts of the engines were painted with Alclad II Airframe Aluminum under XF-1 + X-22. The rest of the aircraft and the smaller components were either painted with Tamiya acrylics or Alclad II White Aluminum. 

 

Now, about the kit.. Hoooo boy, where to start? I'll probably end up writing this like it was it's own review.

 

The first thing you notice about the kit is that it has very few parts - Only around 60 if I remember right - but for such a simple kit, it's also a major pain in the behind to assemble overall. Because of the age of the mold, expect to be trimming off sheets of flash as well. The fit of the fuselage components is fine, but the wing components are especially difficult. The way it's engineered, the entire underside of the wings + undercarriage and bottom half of the fuselage are to be fitted in one piece, but the assembly's so flimsy that it's difficult to keep all of it glued to whatever fuselage supports there are without buckets of cement or CA. This also affects the way that the upper half of the wings fits together. The whole assembly is so flimsy that it bends too easily. In the end, the seam that connects the bottom half and upper half of the wing were impossible for me to eliminate as they just kept cracking and reopening every time I put putty over it and sanded. It would be advisable to stuff some plastic card or CA and talcum powder in there so that it has some structural support. The engines were also tedious to fit together but it was possible to get a flush fit if you test fitted and sanded ad nauseam. Some of the components fit well and others simply didn't. Be careful to test fit everything and you should be able to proceed with the rest of the build somewhat more smoothly.

 

The decals are printed by Cartograf and as a result are quite nice to work with. The adhesive isn't too strong, which on one hand means that they're easy to work with and don't get stuck the moment they're applied. On the other it also means that they're somewhat more prone to being shuffled around when you don't want them to and peeling off. For an airliner kit a lot of stencils are provided which is nice although they might seem too many for some. Check reference photos of the particular aircraft you're modelling. Some of the stencils seemed to be in wrong places in the instructions or not existent at all, especially in the engines.

 

As mentioned in other reviews, the nose gear is too long and should be trimmed a few mm. I did this on my build but found it wasn't enough as the model still had an excessive nose-up position. The nose visor and windscreen is also wrong - The model depicts it as flat but it should be angled. I scratchbuilt this by bending a piece of plasticard and with a bunch of epoxy putty, and printed my own decals for the cockpit windscreens. Worked out pretty well, I think. The main gears need careful alignment because otherwise it doesn't fit on all fours. It doesn't show all that much on the photos, though.

 

Closing in on a long wall of text, I certainly made more than a few mistakes during the build, but despite the difficulty I'm rather content with how it turned out. Thanks for somehow reading until this point, and any feedback would be appreciated!

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Nice work!

I'm glad to see you've improved the windscreen and added some detail to the undercarriage. Just these two improvements add a lot to the finished model in my opinion.

In the past I've shortened the nose gear and lengthened the mains (or at least jacked them up) to get a more level stance.

Quite like the 5° nose take off position as it's not very often modelled like that.

Cheers,

Ian

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16 hours ago, RMCS said:

Superb 

17 hours ago, FAAMAN said:

Nicely done 😎

18 hours ago, Viking said:

Always good to see a Concorde, wasn't it just gorgeous looking, and you've done some lovely moody shots there!

 

Cheers

 

John

21 hours ago, stevej60 said:

Look's superb,always great to see any Concord model's on the forum.

17 hours ago, Turbofan said:

Nice work!

I'm glad to see you've improved the windscreen and added some detail to the undercarriage. Just these two improvements add a lot to the finished model in my opinion.

In the past I've shortened the nose gear and lengthened the mains (or at least jacked them up) to get a more level stance.

Quite like the 5° nose take off position as it's not very often modelled like that.

Cheers,

Ian

Thanks for the compliments, guys! Yes, I also tried to shorten the nose gear but the odd nose-up stance is still there. Maybe a little more would've worked to correct it.

 

 

 

Edited by Columbia20713
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Thanks for showing it. I think that it's the first time I've seen it modelled nose down.  I didn't know that the nose gear was to long but that might be a good thing for me. I have been toying with the idea of building it on the runway with the nose wheel off the ground so a long nose gear might be OK for that. So after read your comments I am prepared for the flimsiness of the kit. I'll save your notes until I'll get around to my kit.

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