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1/144 British Airways A380's with 'What If' Utopia World Image Liveries


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1 hour ago, Back in the Saddle said:

 

Ironically the extra detail with the addition of steering rams is almost impossible to see.

Well...at least you know they are there😉

But I know how that feels,all that work and in the end its barely visible or in the worst case,not at all.

Anyway,its coming along very nice and I am looking forward to see her in full glory.

Alex

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On 02/10/2021 at 17:01, Alex1978 said:

Anyway,its coming along very nice and I am looking forward to see her in full glory.

Thanks Alex - it's getting closer... the undercarriage is now in place:

 

fti.jpg

 

The next one is getting build with the gear up - the belly panel fit was not great and fettling was difficult with the wheels in the way!

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So onto the last major part of the build - finishing the engines.

 

The pylons were previously sprayed with Halford's Racking grey and then masked:

 

e1.jpg

 

Separate pylons would have been so much easier, but hey ho!

 

The Capri blue was then applied in three light coats, to avoid a repeat of the paint reaction I had on the fuselage:

 

e2.jpg

 

It worked! Finally the masking was removed to reveal the painted engines. I've included my ATR-72 and 727 WIP's, just to show the size comparison between these aircraft.

 

e3.jpg

 

Decals and weathering next!

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On 07/10/2021 at 12:00, Alex1978 said:

Very neat work on those engines.

Compared to the other 2 airliners there,they are enormous

Thanks Alex, they are rather big!

They now have all their decals in place and some weathering effects have been added:

 

des.jpg

 

I have masked the flap tracks, ready for their red tips:

 

red.jpg

 

That would have been a far easier job if the wings were still separate - I'll remember that for the next build!

 

I just need to paint the red, attach the engines then it's done!🙂

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On 13/10/2021 at 20:05, neilg said:

The gloss on those engines is beautiful!

Thanks Neil. 👍

Halford's Capri Blue remains my paint of choice for these models. Not as controllable as an airbrush, but a perfect colour match and it gives a lovely finish!

 

On 13/10/2021 at 20:46, Alex1978 said:

Great looking,beautifully done those engines.

 

Interesting registration on the A380 wing...rearrange "X" and "A" and there is my name...😂

Cheers Alex! Never noticed that anagram before (this is why I suck at Countdown!) 😁

 

On 14/10/2021 at 05:43, desert falcon said:

Fantastic looking engines! 

Thanks Johnny! 🙂

 

Talking of which, they are now (almost) in place:

 

eon.jpg

 

The red flap track fairing tips are also done, so hopefully an RFI soon!

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2 hours ago, Terry1954 said:

Looking rather good there Matt!

Thank you Terry!👍

 

I took advantage of a quiet morning and have posted an RFI:

 

 

Thanks for everybody's company, support and help along the way - you've resulted in this model being better than it would have been without your input!👍

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That's looking really good!

 

One question I've had for a while with Airbus aircraft...  

 

What is the silver strip for on the underside, aft of the body gear?

 

I also don't know what the black stripes are for, on the upper and lower wing roots.

 

They're provided as decals on the kit, but I've no idea what they're for.

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15 hours ago, neilg said:

One question I've had for a while with Airbus aircraft...  

 

What is the silver strip for on the underside, aft of the body gear?

 

I also don't know what the black stripes are for, on the upper and lower wing roots.

 

They're provided as decals on the kit, but I've no idea what they're for.

 

Hi Neil,

 

The silver strip on the belly fairings aft of the wings/body gears is a strip to take up relative movement of the aircraft / body fairings. The fairings them self are made out of composite and if I remember correctly the strip it is made out of titanium.

 

I haven’t seen the decal sheets, but if the black stripes are extending almost the full length of both the under and upper sides of the wing roots, when they could possibly be weather seals between the wing itself and the body fairings. They are however grey'ish on the real A380 aircraft. I could be wrong though and they could be something completely different?

 

Cheers

Johnny b

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7 hours ago, desert falcon said:

 

Hi Neil,

 

The silver strip on the belly fairings aft of the wings/body gears is a strip to take up relative movement of the aircraft / body fairings. The fairings them self are made out of composite and if I remember correctly the strip it is made out of titanium.

 

I haven’t seen the decal sheets, but if the black stripes are extending almost the full length of both the under and upper sides of the wing roots, when they could possibly be weather seals between the wing itself and the body fairings. They are however grey'ish on the real A380 aircraft. I could be wrong though and they could be something completely different?

 

Cheers

Johnny b

 

That's great - thanks for the info!

 

It really adds detail to the kit, but there are a lot of decals on the A380!

 

Here's the decal sheet for the Airbus livery:

 

R57Dg.jpg

 

The markings I was referring to are 79, 80, 96, 97, 58.

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@neilg that for sure is a lot of decals. Unfortunately I can’t confirm on the black lines on the decals sheet, it’s difficult without having the instructions and the kit in the hand. With yours as well, hopefully there will be many more A380 builds to follow around here in the near future :) 

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On 5/21/2021 at 10:32 PM, (ex)Sgtrafman said:

Great job mate loving what your doing, and airliners really aren’t my thing 😱

 

Ditto what Iain said.

 

I think your builds are awakening a latent love of airliners in me Matt :D

 

Steve

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  • 1 month later...

Apologies for not replying to some of the later comments - I didn’t get any notifications that there were more replies on this thread…🙁


@neilg and @desert falcon - I think between you you’ve worked out what those lines are for. Thanks for that, as I had no idea!

 

I’ve looked at the decal sheet for this kit, as I’ve just started another one (but I’m not documenting the build this time, it will just get an RFI when it’s done). The BA instructions show the silver band, but misses out the four curved black lines even though the decal sheet still has these printed on it. I must admit, I assumed they were surplus during the last build and binned them, but if they should go on the wing roots I’ll incorporate them into my next builds.👍

 

On 20/10/2021 at 22:15, Fritag said:

Ditto what Iain said.

 

I think your builds are awakening a latent love of airliners in me Matt :D

Cheers Steve! Glad you like them - I seem to have a eclectic mixture of kits at the moment. Airliners are more colourful (especially the Utopia designs!) but the military hardware is generally more interesting. I’m even toying with building a vehicle at some point, just to give it a try. Maybe a VW camper?

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As I mentioned on @Terry1954's glider build thread the other day, I'm off work for a while due to catching Covid... I can't really complain as it's a relatively mild case, but the enforced self-isolation means I'm currently living in the spare bedroom and avoiding the family as much as possible! 😷

 

To try to keep boredom at bay, I have grabbed another A380 from the stash as my next project. I am looking for a relatively simple model and I've obviously built one of these already, so I know what to expect. To make it even simpler (and give me some different display options!), I am building this one with the gear retracted - that will save hours of work! 😁

 

Rather than starting a new thread and documenting the entire build, I thought I would add a few updates to this one which show the main differences in construction when building the 'gear up' option. The Revell instructions are a bit lacking in this regard...

 

Also, as I cannot access the room where I usually build models, I am a bit limited as to what I can actually achieve at the moment. I have glue, a scalpel and a cutting mat, so whilst I can construct, I am unable to fill and sand (I usually do this under a running tap, to keep the dust down). Consequently it all looks a bit rough for now, until I can access sandpaper and the kitchen sink again - that should be sometime next week!

 

Anyway, onto the build itself. The fuselage construction was the same as before, only without the nose gear bay. On reflection this would have been useful to add, purely to support the gear doors - I had to insert a couple of support tabs to do this job:

 

ngtb.jpg

 

Having learnt from that omission(!), I built the gear bays to support the belly panel and glued them into place:

 

mgbs.jpg

 

All a bit rough for now, but I will trim flash and other excess plastic later. Time to offer up the belly panel:

 

offt.jpg

 

The belly panel was wider than the opening in the fuselage - compare the overlap by the top red dot compared with the bottom one. However, the belly panel has a tapered shape, so it could be slid into position and force the opening apart - here's a dry test fit, which looks OK:

 

wdg.jpg

 

Nothing that some filler won't fix!

My final job before attaching the panel was to make an anchoring support for a display rod. I glued some scrap sprue together to form a block:

 

blok.jpg

 

I can drill into that and insert a support rod at a later stage.👍

 

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On 26/11/2021 at 11:20, desert falcon said:

GWS, will be interesting to see it in “gears up” config. 

Cheers Johnny. Still affected by very mild symptoms and it's lingering a bit...

At least I can come out of the spare room next week as my 10 days of isolation will be over.🙂

 

I glued the gear doors into place earlier:

 

doos.jpg

 

noos.jpg

 

Again, not the best fitting components but filler and sanding will rescue this quite easily. I should get a better finish on this model (compared with the first one), simply as I can sand it without the fragile gear getting in the way!

 

@Skodadriver - I will try and get the "Avignon" design onto this one. No guarantees, as I've not started to tweak it on Photoshop yet, but if I can amend the graphics to my satisfaction it will happen.👍

 

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  • 4 months later...

Work on this one has been plodding along slowly whenever I get some time.

 

The fuselage is almost ready for painting, having had a fair few rounds of filling and sanding. I've also started to adapt the "Avignon" tail design, inspired by @Skodadriver's suggestion on my previous A380 RFI page - here's the how the design is currently progressing:

 

ssavi.jpg

 

The aspect ratio wasn't completely right compared to the 737 fin which originally had this design applied to it, meaning some of the pattern has to be 'imagined' - mainly a process of extrapolating how the artwork would look if you moved outside the original area. For example, the corner of the guy's head was never on the original design, but it was easy to work out how it would look, had it been included.

 

Obviously there is much more to be done, but I'm now confident I can get this design too fit onto the A380 tail and still look plausible!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

My second A380 model is coming along nicely, but the work on the 'Avignon' decal is progressing very slowly. Here's the current state of play - not a huge difference from the image a month ago:

 

a1.jpg

 

The area marked with an orange line needs to be completely imagined and I'm not quite sure how this bit should look! The yellow bits are the girl's leg but what is the green bit? Until I can work this out, I'm struggling to finish this section. It will get done eventually, I'm just not sure when...

 

On that basis, I moved onto another design I want to replicate - "Colour Down The Side" by Sir Terry Frost. This image was only used on one aircraft (G-BRYT, if you want to Google it!) but the general design was used extensively on products related to Concorde, such as the metal baggage tags handed out to customers at the time.

 

The art work is much simpler and is based upon a painting by Sir Terry which used to hang at BA's headquarters. Here's the screenshot of the version I have made:

 

cd1.jpg

 

Also of note is a preliminary design for the Indian tail design named "Paithani" - that one is also in the pipeline for a future A380 build!

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A quick word about the process of creating the 'Paithani' design, which can be seen in the above Photoshop screenshot - I'm planning to replicate this design on an A380 build later in the year. This artwork appeared in two different variations, both featuring a woven pattern based upon a gold background. This version was on G-BDXO and the image below is used with the kind permission of the photographer Chris Sheldon:

 

xo.jpg

 

I obtained a 1/400 diecast model of this aircraft and photographed the fin to try to isolate the pattern:

 

gj.jpg

 

This model is not 100% accurate and has a few differences compared with the original, but it's a good starting point.👍

 

I used a rough copy of this to get the approximate colour and design correct, then printed out the decals excluding the gold sections. This was then cut out, ready to be applied to a spare 727 wing which had already been painted gold:

 

fro.jpg

 

The 727 wing is half the size of the A380 tail fin! Consequently I could only use half of the decal...

 

tri.jpg

 

Once applied I was happy with the general appearance. The gold paint shows through in all the correct places without affecting the colours on the decal.

 

Now I know this technique works, I will refine the design for the decals to make it as accurate as possible.

 

 

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2 hours ago, Back in the Saddle said:

The 727 wing is half the size of the A380 tail fin! Consequently I could only use half of the decal...

Also for comparison, the span of the A380 horizontal stabilizer is about the same as the wing span of an A320 family aircraft. As you know, this in any regards a massive airliner !! 

 

Once again you are doing magic on those decals, thanks for keeping us posted :) 

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