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Newbie BA Airbus A319 1/144


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My first attempt at doing a kit model properly, rather than my childhood experiences of throwing them together, painting them before finally destroying them in an actual blaze of glory! So I'm pretty much a complete newbie.

 

It's Revell's Airbus A319 1/144 kit, with BA and German Wings livery included, I chose BA. The white of the fuselage is painted with Tamiya spray, and I've used Tamiya spary lacquer along the way. Everything else is brush painted with Revell enamels.

 

I've made plenty of mistakes, the worst being trying to mask over decals that had already been applied in order to correct a mistake, resulting in the BA logo on one side of having a chunk missing. Still trying to source a replacement set of decals to fix this.

Any critique gratefully received, in particular areas where improvements could be made. I appreciate that this is way off the standard of most of the stuff here, but it's a start!

 

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Nice work and welcome to Britmodeller.

we’re a friendly bunch and you’ll get lots of tips for your next build. 🤩

You’re a brave man for going full tilt on this bird with enamels and a hairy stick. Especially masking too, I never get masks to work without bleeding if I ever brush.

personally I would have added a spot of weathering but I know that @Martian Hale would disapprove. 🤪

overall she’s a neat build with a very pleasing finish. The rather difficult decals have gone down really well.😍 One word of advice though the RFI section is for finished pics usually after a WIP. Some folk don’t do WIPs but I find them quite addictive. You seem to have done a good wip there. You could split this into two threads and link them together if you wish.

either way, I’m looking forward to the next build.

whatever it may be? 😉

 

Johnny.

Edited by The Spadgent
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:welcome: A very creditable effort and even better when considered its your first. @The Spadgent is correct, I prefer clean models. Seeing as he got me involved, don't mention Macbeth to him. He is very superstitious and has to do a strange ritual as you will see. I try and warn all newcomers to avoid Macbeth being mentioned too often and save poor Johnny's nose.

 

Helpful of Mars 👽

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4 hours ago, Martian Hale said:

:welcome: A very creditable effort and even better when considered its your first. @The Spadgent is correct, I prefer clean models. Seeing as he got me involved, don't mention Macbeth to him. He is very superstitious and has to do a strange ritual as you will see. I try and warn all newcomers to avoid Macbeth being mentioned too often and save poor Johnny's nose.

 

Helpful of Mars 👽

Hot potato orchestra stalls .... mutter mutter tweak. 👃 ouch. 🤣 bloody swine. 🤪

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14 hours ago, Retroeric said:

Any critique gratefully received, in particular areas where improvements could be made.

You've done a lovely job which would be improved by a little filler use. I find Mr Surfacer 500 great for seams like the one resulting from the join of the fuselage halves but everyone here will have their own 'best solution' for that! I recently started spraying my models overall with Mr Surfacer 1000 before painting and this helps define any further filling required and fills small blemishes. Don't know why it took me this long to use it...

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Welcome to Britmodeller and airliner modelling! What a great subject to choose for your first airliner, and not an easy one with that dark blue lower fuselage. It is tricky to do but you've made a good job of it. Nice masking on the wing panels too, that's exactly the way to do it! Keep on posting, as you can see, all the guys on here are keen to help and encourage.

What is next onto the workbench?

 

Cheers

 

John

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Masking and brush painting gloss? On an airliner? 

 

From now on everything is going to be a walk in the park!

 

Welcome to BM. Can I suggest a Spitfire or ME 109 next? We don't see many of those...

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Welcome to Britmodeller and congratulations on an excellent first airliner.  Can I make a couple of suggestions for your next model which I hope we'll see before long?

 

The wing in the Revell A319 kit is really only accurate for the A321. To correct it for the A319 and A320 you need to remove the five small fairings on the underside and fill the corresponding panel lines on the upper surface. It only takes a few minutes. Here is the A321 wing and here is the A319 - you can see the differences. The other slight fault with the kit wing is that the winglets are too small. Resin replacements are available from BraZ Models or you can make them from thin plastic. If it's any help this is an A319 I built a while ago and the photos show the amended wings and winglets.

 

As @Bell209 says, we all have our favourite fillers. For smaller areas ordinary superglue applied with a pin is good although you have to sand it within 5-10 minutes otherwise it will set harder than the surrounding plastic. Mr Surfacer 500 is great for awkward areas like the seam inside the front of the engine cowlings because instead of sanding you can use isopropyl alcohol on a cotton swab to remove any surplus. Overall, however, my "go to" filler is superfine (white) Milliput although some modellers find its long setting time a drawback.

 

Many of us paint our airliners with Halfords paint. Their white and grey primers are excellent. As a wise modeller once said, you should think of priming as the last stage of building rather than the first stage of painting. Grey primer in particular is good for showing up flaws which you can then correct. Appliance Gloss White is as good as anything produced by Tamiya and significantly cheaper. Racking Grey (with the workshop paints, not the car colours) makes a good "Boeing" grey and if you do another BA model Fiat Capri Blue is a perfect match for the current BA blue. I usually decant Halfords paint into my airbrush but many other modellers get great results straight from the can. My advice would be to practise on a scrap model before tackling your masterpiece.

 

Some airliner modellers, including me, favour filling the kit windows and using window decals, particularly the superb "photo-real" decals produced by Authentic Airliner Decals. I know not everybody agrees with this and ultimately it's a matter of personal preference. If you do think of going down the decal route, the best way to fill the windows is to roll a thin "sausage" of Milliput, apply it on the inside of the fuselage and press it into the window apertures so that it is just proud on the outside. You can then use a wet finger to smooth it and give it a final sanding with wet and dry paper once it's set.

 

Hope you find these comments helpful. If you are looking for spare Revell BA decals, drop me a personal message and I'll sort you out. 

 

Dave G

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Hi,

Welcome to BM and the wonderful world of airliner modelling!

As John says your masking is very nice and you appear to have achieved a good sharp straight line between the blue and white, not easy to do. The coroguard masking on the wings is quite complex but you've done a great job on that too!

 

With regard to the decal wrapping round the rear of the fuselage if you apply some microsol (available at any good model shop or ebay) this will soften the decal and as it dries will suck it onto the shapes of the tailcone.

 

For filling I find milliput the best as it is very easy to sculpt and doesn't shrink.

 

If I may I'd like to point out that BA A319s use IAE V2500 engines instead of the CFMs you've used, both sets should be included in that kit. Also they don't have the silver cockpit framing.

 

I can only echo Dave's recommendations of Authentic Airliners windows I use them on just about all my models and I feel they really bring an airliner to life.

 

Don't worry about your mistakes it can be a bit of a minefield with so many new techniques and details to know about but we're all here to help!

You should be very proud of your first proper model it's certainly better than my first ones!

Looking forward to your next model.

Cheers,

Ian

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For a first "proper attempt" at an airliner you've achieved a very creditable final result.

 

I was going to offer some spare decals but having read the complete thread I can see that Dave #Skodadriver  has beaten me to it!  As he also says, Halfords primers, Appliance White and Racking Grey are much cheaper than brands like Tamiya - I'm old fashioned and spray them direct from the rattle can.

 

Re decals in general I'll also second the use of Authentic Airliners for windows and 26decals or F-Dcal for liveries that you can't get with a kit.

 

Looking forward to your next build,

 

Mike

 

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Great detailed feedback, thanks all.

 

@Viking The lower fuselage was the hardest part to paint. You can see from the photos that I cocked it up first time around and had to re-mask to make the blue go further back. It's still not perfect because from a side on view, it starts to rise up just before the end as the fuselage curve inwards. Tricky that.

 

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@IanC Yep, it's a 1:32 scale Spitfire next, just about to start a WIP thread.

 

@Skodadriver Fab comments, thanks. I'll message you about the decals, cheers.

 

@Turbofan I made a huge cockup on the IAE V2500 engines (can't remember what I did), so I just went for the spare set of CFMs.  Good spot 😉   Also used Microsol on the tail decal, and it did help but it still didn't wrap very well around the underside of the tail cone. That was just me rushing it I think.

 

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Edited by Retroeric
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What a great choice of kit and livery to start with there - I'm always glad to see our Chatham Historic Dockyard livery on the assembly line. Good luck with the rest of the build, don't let yourself not be tempted into making the BEA variant straight afterwards ! 26 Decals recommended for that version. Did you know that the BA/German Wings kit you have built is actual quite rare these days and can command upper market prices?

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2 hours ago, Gimme Shelter said:

Did you know that the BA/German Wings kit you have built is actual quite rare these days and can command upper market prices?

I didn't know that, and I can't even remember where I got it from it was so long ago 😁

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