Revell A380 Airbus Technik British Airways

[Stinger 9]

Hi there,

Great to be back and to be able to post again. It has been over 6 years since I last did a build so decided to get back and try my hand again.

I will attempt to build this kit by Revell. I was in the hobby shop and happened to see it so decided to try my hand at it. 

This kit comes with lights and sound so it is new territory for me and given my not so great modelling skill have not been kept up to scratch, I hope I don't muck it up as it has cost me a fortune to buy the kit, paints and other requirements given all my old modelling tools are in boxes in storage since we moved house earlier this year.

I was lucky enough to fly on the A380 from Sydney to Singapore with Singapore Airlines and return in Business class and it was a fantastic experience. The plane is amazing. We also got to fly it again on the fist leg of our trip from Sydney to Paris. This time it was on China Southern from Sydney to Guangzhou. Again an amazing flight in Business and we had the best time drinking at the bar with about 8 other people. 

The kit comes standard in the Airbus livery and the decals are quite impressive. I pondered if I should do it in that scheme or do it in the Singapore Airlines or China Southern scheme as I did discover that decal sheets for those airlines can be bought online. I also though about doing it in the Emirates scheme as they are the major sponsors of my footy team here in Australia.

Whilst buying paint for the model at the hobby shop, an excellent sales assistant, after a chat about the different schemes, said he could get me the British Airways decals as he had them and was not using them.

I decided that given I have always liked the British Airways livery, I would do this in that scheme.

And so the saga begins ………….

 

The box cover illustrating the sound and light functions. It has features such as a hostess welcoming passengers on board, some pilot communications chatter, engines start up etc. Quite nice actually. The lights also have blinking features for the wings etc. so should be quite good when done

 

The electronics are all labelled excellently so that should make it easier for numpties like me to follow the instructions and get it right. 

 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Stinger 9
reduce size of photos

[Stinger 9]

The Grand Plan

 

I am going to build this as per the instructions and use the decals that came with the kit apart from the British Airways decals which were given to me.

As this is such a huge size and there are electronics involved, I decided to paint everything and will do the decals as well before final assembly.

It would have been great if there was an underside decal for the blue of the aircraft as I  fear I may not get the demarcation lines correct between the blue and white paint scheme, especially as there are curves involved. I am certain more skilled modellers would not have a problem with this but I do lack those skills.

The plan appears to be sound but as we all know, the best laid plans of mice and men ………..

 

Working conditions

I am working under sufferance as I don't have my previous workspace so will be building this on my dining table. SWMBO is absolutely thrilled about this development.

I used to have a nice enclosed garage where I could spray in all types of weather but alas, that is no longer as we have moved into a 5th floor apartment. 

This is my "spray booth" as such, although the view is quite nice.

I also don't have an air brush so all painting will be done by brush or spray cans

I started on the wings and realised this is going to require a truckload of masking tape

Three different colours on the wings means masking and painting, then removing the masking  and do it all over again twice more

 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2020 by Stinger 9
change of content

[Stinger 9]

Wings

 

I painted the wings according to the instructions and I think they came out reasonably well. It was a bit time consuming and made even more time consuming as I made a mistake by spraying the wrong colour on the wing edges as I was distracted by SWMBO and the pooch. 

 

The red bits were particularly time consuming as there are 10 pieces that I had to mask and they were quite fiddly. Thank goodness for stretch masking tape. I never knew that product existed until I started to do this build

 

I will put these together after I have included the lighting on each wing. The wiring goes into the fuselage so I will do all the wiring in one session.

Onwards to the next phase

 

 

 

[Stinger 9]

Painting the beast

 

I made a decision that if I mucked up the painting of the underside of the plane, I would revert back to my initial thoughts about doing it in either the Singapore Airlines or Emirates livery. I also did seriously thing about the Airbus livery that had the decals with this kit.

The advantage of those three schemes is the the entire body is white and I was fearful of getting the blue of the British Airways mucked up. The easy way was always at the forefront of my thoughts. I decide to have a crack at the blue underside before doing the engines as they too could have been done in white.

The first step in my grand plan was to spray the entire body white which is easy although it did take a while as I did some light sprays all over the body until I was satisfied it was acceptable to move to the next stage.

The next stage was to mark the outline of the blue portion of the underside. This took an eternity as I kept looking at photos and the painting instructions from the Revell instruction manual for the British Airways version which I was able to download.

I used masking tape as a means of trying to the the proportions as close as possible on ether side of the body as well as getting a straight line from side on whilst trying to get the curves correct on the underside of the body towards the rear end of the plane.

Once marked, I used masking tape on the lines I had drawn on the body and used eyesight to see if it was reasonably straight and level. It was at this time that I started to seriously think about the three easier versions. The masking took about 2 hours as I had to review what I had done , remove tape and redo it all over again as I was unhappy with my effort.

I sprayed the blue several times as they were light sprays as I didn't want any overspray where possible. Once dry, I removed the masking tape to check my results.

 

Bleeding

 

As I was removing  the masking tape, I started to notice areas where there was bleeding. The blue had seeped onto the white. There were several profanities to be heard as the results of my very poor painting effort started to be revealed.

 

The result was not acceptable. I said to myself,  "Self, you can stop now and do one of the other options, or you can try again".

So I compromised and tried the difficult version again. I removed all the masking and redid it all over again.

The white upper portion was done first as I thought that would fix the blue bleeding. It did except for one small fly in the ointment. The white seeped into the blue.

This was becoming a bleeding nightmare to say the least 

So I masked again and tried to fix the white bleeding by respraying the blue section. Result? Worked perfectly except the blue bled into the white again.

I repeated this exercise another 3 times doing white, then blue, then white again. This exercise has taken me about 8 days to complete working on it on again, off again, due to other important things such as work commitments.

 

I am reasonably happy with the final result as the lines look reasonably straight and in proportion

 

 

Thrilled that the nose bleed has stopped. I will touch up the nose so it should look reasonable

 

 

Whilst all this was drying I was working on painting and assembling the engines and wheels now that I was reasonably happy with my progress.

No, it is not going into any model competition as I would not insult any decent modeler with my lame offering. It will do for me as it will be in my office at home 

[fjaweijfopi4j48]

Nice subject, but it seems that you are not making life easy for yourself (or the model, or the Mrs.) due to your particular circumstances.

Working like that in such difficult conditions speaks highly of your commendable strong will and commitment to modeling.

Long ago I took a kit I wanted to build to a camping trip. In a tent. Don't ask why. The innumerable problems encountered still haunt me after decades.

We modelers like to challenge ourselves (if not, why build models in the first place, fiddly and messy little buggers), but your situation sounds like extreme sports to me.

Wishing you the best.

 

 

 

 

 

[Stinger 9]

3 hours ago, Moa said:

Nice subject, but it seems that you are not making life easy for yourself (or the model, or the Mrs.) due to your particular circumstances.

Working like that in such difficult conditions speaks highly of your commendable strong will and commitment to modeling.

Long ago I took a kit I wanted to build to a camping trip. In a tent. Don't ask why. The innumerable problems encountered still haunt me after decades.

We modelers like to challenge ourselves (if not, why build models in the first place, fiddly and messy little buggers), but your situation sounds like extreme sports to me.

Wishing you the best.

 

Thank you. I could not imagine building a model in a tent. Very brave

 

 

 

 

[Stinger 9]

The Engines

 

Whilst the paint was drying on the body of the aircraft, I started work on the engines. As an observation, the quality of the parts and sprues are nowhere near the standard of Tamiya kits. There is a considerable amount of flashing around the parts which requires a considerable amount of filing. Nevertheless, we keep going and work around the obstacles. Perhaps I am just used to the Tamiya standards and quality.

I painted the inside of the engines and the internal fan blades? which was a complete waste of time as once in the cowling, you can't actually see the rear one.

 

Front and side on awaiting decals. I did the decal on the fan cone prior to putting the engine together. That was a fun exercise trying to get a uniform swirl with the decals. They turned out reasonably well after a lot of gnashing of teeth and trial and error. One thing is for certain. My modelling ability has certainly dwindled in time.

 

Here is an example of the engines almost complete with the decals included as per the instructions. They actually came up quite well and I will give them a coat of clear gloss before attaching them to the wings

 

 

Next on the agenda is to do the decals on the wings which will take some time as there are quite a few.

[Stinger 9]

Electronics

After doing the wing decals, it was time to start doing the wiring of the lights and sound for this beast. The different lights are all well marked and the connections to the circuit board is also well defined.

I started by testing the different lights and the speaker and immediately ran into a problem. Nothing worked which was quite frustrating. I thought it may have been the batteries I used so decided to go and get some new ones. Problem solved. 

The sound was quite loud so I imagine it will reduce in volume when the body is put together. There is no individual control for the volume of the sound or the lights. I tested all the lights and they worked, including the blinking etc.

 

This is the lighting ribbon for the cabin lights being tested

 

Testing of wing tip lights

 

 

I wired up the wing light near the fuselage and that part was fine as the nano globe fitted nicely into clear part for the main wing light. Next came the red wing tip light. I painted the light with a clear red and tested it on the wing and it came up quite nicely. I started to put it into place and then realised there was a slight problem.

Actually it is quite a big problem where there should not be a problem at all and I started to question why this was not thought of before this part of the model was designed.

 

As an example, this is where the two parts of the wing join up and is glued together. As you can see the joins are flush which is what is expected.

By the way, I did have to cut a small piece out of the wings to get the wires to go through as they will go through the fuselage where the circuit board will sit. Again, not sure why this was not done when the kit was being designed as it saves a lot of time and effort

 

 

The place where the wing tip lights go is also a flush join between the top and bottom of the wings although there is a small cavity to place the clear part which represents the light.  There is no place to insert the globe into the clear piece 

 

 

I had to file away a space on each of the wing pieces so that the illumination can come through when the globe is placed inside the wing and then the two pieces are glued together. I did that with the port wing and it works fine. I did forget to take a shot of it wired up but will do that when I do the starboard wing.

 

Next issue was getting the wiring into the fuselage. The instructions show an opening for the wiring to go through but alas there is no such space. I decided to drill a hole where the wires can go through so I can connect them to the circuit board.

 

 

I did plan on getting all the wiring done in one shot but these frustrating issues prevented that. I am still trying to figure out how to do the cabin lights as that ribbon is one piece and is quite long but not long enough o cover the upper and lower decks on both sides of this model. 

The other part that is going to be fun is putting this thing together with all the wiring in the body coming from two directions.

I am also pondering if I should do the decals on the body prior to putting the thing together

 

 

 

 

Edited November 7, 2020 by Stinger 9
Incomplete post

[desert falcon]

Nice project @Stinger 9, will be following with interest.

 

And welcome back to the hobby !!

 

Cheers

 

Johnny b 

[Stinger 9]

3 hours ago, desert falcon said:

Nice project @Stinger 9, will be following with interest.

 

And welcome back to the hobby !!

 

Cheers

 

Johnny b 

Thank you. Just had finger surgery so the build is on hold for the moment until the cast comes off and I can use my fingers again.

[desert falcon]

2 minutes ago, Stinger 9 said:

Thank you. Just had finger surgery so the build is on hold for the moment until the cast comes off and I can use my fingers again.

Sounds reasonably, wishing you a speedy recovery !!

 

 

[coneheadff]

Great progress for such a limited space!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!!

 

[Stinger 9]

On 18/11/2020 at 09:31, coneheadff said:

Great progress for such a limited space!

Best wishes for a speedy recovery!!

 

Thank you very much