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Eastern Express A220-300 Air Tanzania 1/144


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Hi everybody,

 

I finally finished my second model of the year.....

 

At first I was bit sceptical as I hadn't done an Eastern Express model before, and what I heard / saw is that they werent always great to build. Nevertheless the A220 kit got rather decent reviews so at some point I decided to give it a try, as there are plenty of nice liveries / decals for it.

 

To my surprise the kit is rather good. The fit of the fuselage, and cockpit part is surprisingly good and certainly better than on any Revell A321/ 320 neo I recently did. Sure one has to try and sand the parts before glueing, but if one does so one can get a decent result without too much effort. The wings are a bit fiddly and the panel lines there are rather thin, so I'd definitely recommend a scriber (which I did) as otherwise likely detais there will be barely visible. The gear is also a bit fiddly, but the engines are surprisingly easy and with a good separation of parts that makes painting easy. All in all a good kit and it certainly wont be my last A220, as I said plenty of nice ones outthere (Air Austral, Air Canada retro, just to name a few)...

 

Initially it was going to be one of the Air Baltic specials, but I changed my plans and went for the Air Tanzania decals from Authentic Airliners. 

Those are excellent, one can see that  those decals were actually tested on the real model, I whish other vendors would do that too - at least from time to time. It also comes with masks for the tail, so yes the blue is fully painted, which in my opinion is the better alternative than putting large decals over a curved area. A friend of mine (if you read this M. - THANKS) cut me some masks as well for the white part where the stabs meet the fuselage (that is the only critique point on the AA the white is faaar from being opaque - but thats a minor thing).
And yeah I used some Nazca detail decals, as the kit comes with rather few and zero decals for wings / engines, which then would look pretty bland.

 

Otherwise it was painted with Tamiya X-1,, Mr- Hobby Super Metallic SM201 for the silver edges and some self mixed blue.

 

So here are the pics..

 

Thanks for looking and happy holidays!

 

Julien

 

 

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Edited by JK_Models
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Julien, that is exquiste.

Very well put together and well complemented by a wonderful livery.

I was pleased to hear your generally positive appraisal of putting the kit together, just the nudge I needed to start mine.

It seems to be a type that is beginning to sell well for Airbus so there will be many more liveries to choose from.

Vincent

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The A220, to my mind, is a beautiful airplane and your model definitely does it justice. Wish we could have one in 1/72 scale and I wouldn't refuse one in 1/48. But that's just me.

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That's a really beautiful model Julien.

 

Johannes Wipauer gave the EE A220-100 a rather mixed review on Modellversium a couple of years ago and with the high UK price of the kit I decided not to bother buying it. Your gorgeous build of bigger brother A220-300 makes me think I should add at least one example to the stash before the price goes any higher!

 

Thanks for sharing

 

Dave G

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Hi,

 

thanks for your kind comments, I appreciate it.

@Rupert: Thanks. Any plans what (Airline) yours will be? Otherwise I fully agree the plane is selling well at the moment, so yes there will be more and more nice liveries to chose from.


@Skodadriver: I think you should definitely get one. I read that review on Modellversium as well, but dont fully agree.
Well it is surely not as neat as some Zvezda kits are and I would not recommend it to a beginner, but as I said it is a good kit and for an experienced modeller absolutely not problematic or so.
For me 2 things make a good kit 1) it looks like the orginal especially in the shape 2) it doesnt need a super huge effort to get it right. The EE kit ticks both boxes, it was actually one of my quickest builds, I think I started it some 6 weeks back.
It doesnt come cheap in Germany neither, sometimes there are better offers on ebay or you might want to check out a russian store called i modelist.

 

I am thinking about doing an Embraer 195-E2 from Eastern Express as well, only a limited Airline Choice so far keeps me from doing one.

Cheers, Julien

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Wonderful build.

The livery is very nice and being fond of african airlines,this might be on my to do list.

I have the -200 in my stash and having built some of the newer EE kits,they have certainly improved and I really like the new EE kits.

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Thanks for all your kind comments. I appreciate it a lot!

 


I gave the EE 220-300 kit as a christmas gift to very good friend who is also modeller. He confirmed to me as well that the fuselage fits surprisingly good and that he is positively surprised by the kit as well.

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A stunning model! My experience with Eastern Express has overall been positive (excluding a Minicraft re-box of the 757, someday I'll strip it back and salvage it.....) the Dash 8 Q400 I built sounds like a similar quality to the A220 you've described. 

 

Seeing this makes me want to build more EE Kits but on a tight budget the price point and poor quality of inbox decals kind of puts me off.

 

Nonetheless its nice to see an EE model on the forums and you've got yourself a fantastic result their, maybe we'll see an Air Baltic from you soon?

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