The start

For £24.44 ModelActive provided me with the 1:72 Airfix Concorde kit. Easy isn’t it. Inspecting the contents I found the clear visor rattling around the bag in two pieces. I’ve requested a replacement, but could mend it. On the other hand I might contemplate scratch-building a visor as the original part is thick and really un-defined. Scale canopies and glass are difficult to achieve but at least this subject is fairly simple.
The rest of the kit looks fairly straight forward and the size is really impressive. It certainly inspires me to put the effort in as, once built, this would look great on display.

Most issues I’ve read about have been to do with the fit between fuselage sections. The instructions suggest that the sections are constructed then these ‘tubes’ fitted together. Doing a dry run of the sections really shows the differences in the diameters along the fuselage.
I think I’ll join the sections for each side together first and then join the two halves together as I think the centre seam will be easier to deal with rather than 3 main sections of different diameters. With a little pressure the fit isn’t too bad (I’m not saying it’s great though).
There was no question that I wanted this model displayed gear down and nose up, so I’m not interested in the ‘gimmick’ of a moving nose. None of that around here, thank you very much. Besides the brittle clear plastic the mechanism’s moulded from (“Look, you can move it up, down *SNAP* oh, and off…”) the fit of the panels is pretty poor and will look sharper filled and re-scribed.
So, this will have to come off.Anyway, Step 1 : Starboard Engine and Intakes.
The moulding is very thin and the bottom leading edge of the intake is warped.
Hopefully I can sort this out when the dividing panel is fitted.

The engine panels have moulded vents on the underside, which I think are meant to be ‘spill doors’. Looking at the reference images these are incorrect.

The moulded flaps would lift into the air-intake whereas the section hi-lighted in blue is a large spill door and can be lowered. I’m not going to lower/lift anything here and I’ve sanded down the lumps and will fill and re-scribe. I’ve continued the panel lines up the side of the moulding as they were non existent. Also here are a couple of prominent panels and a few vents that I’ll try and detail.
To end my first session I tried to do something with the ‘back-end’ of the engine. The fans at the front are quite well hidden so a bit of dry-brushing will be enough there. At the hot end though some detail will be seen and something needs to be done to add some interest. The moulding is very basic so I’d like to at least add the after-burner rings. I sanded down the part using wet-and-dry on a sheet of glass to keep it flat. It didn’t take long to get through to the spokes and I was able to pop out the thin triangles and clean up the edges with a scalpel.

Looks better already.

Born again modeller

Concorde has always held a special fascination for me. I remember the regular sonic booms as it flew over south Wales when I was a young boy and squinting to try and catch a glimpse. Visits to my grandfather in London were particularly exciting as I watched its approach into Heathrow. On the rare occasions that we went to the airport itself I would watch in awe as one took off and then scout around the terminal buildings to find one or two lurking behind.
In 1979 I can vividly remember a hot summer’s day out at Rhoose airport to watch an Air France Concorde fly-by and land. The airport was packed. I bought an Airfix kit and couldn’t wait to build it. It didn’t have any decals, but a letter to Airfix soon fixed that. It’s likely that it met it’s end a few years later at the bottom of the garden in some epic mixed-scale disaster scenario, involving a few Matchbox cars and matches.
The best encounter was during a trip to the Fire Department at Heathrow and a tour around the maintenance hangars. A Concorde, fresh from New York, had just come in and our small group were taken on-board. American newspapers lay on the seats and I remember how small it seemed inside. In the cockpit I was allowed to drop the nose and sit in the captain’s seat – what more could you want when you’re 13?
I bought a 1:144 Airfix kit from the airport gift shop and eagerly built it as soon as I could – may have even painted it – and it took pride of place hanging amongst my other plastic ‘masterpieces’ from the ceiling. It met a similar fate to it’s French predecessor.

So now, twenty five years later I am craving a styrene fix.
In the intervening years someone has conveniently invented the internet. Reference photos, tips & tricks from the pro’s, forums, and online shops around the world are available to all and has certainly fired-up a new-found interest in my old hobby. Perhaps it’s because my hands have grown, but those ‘massive’ Tornados and Phantoms in 1:72 scale seem so small now. Too tiny and fiddly for the level of detail I’d like to acheive now. Not that I’m a rivet counter – I just want it to be a pretty close approximation but not ‘toy-like’. My tastes and interests have changed and my enthusiasm ebbs and flows, usually based on nostalgia or a visit to a museum. So my stash includes a PBY-5 Catalina, MkIV Spitfire and EE Lightning F.6 all in 1:48 scale. A scattering of cheap 1:72 kits are for practice. I’m hoping to build-up my rusty skills and adopt new techniques on these sacrificial kits before applying them to the larger and more expensive stuff. One of the advantages of being a grown-up kid is being able to afford some of the kits that would have been out of range when you were younger.

Of course I had to include Concorde and the Airfix 1:72 (big and cheap) offering seemed an essential purchase.
Trawling the web for information I found a mixed bag of opinions from favourable to ‘run away very fast’. A couple of build reviews exist but not in as much detail as I would have liked, so I’m putting my two-penneth in and blogging my build of this kit.
The most useful reviews can be found here and here and do a much better job than I can of describing the kit.

There are a few things I’d like to acheive –
• a fairly accurate representation of the aircraft, without counting the rivets.
• as much detail as I can withstand.
• a straight fuselage, which could be a struggle from the information I’ve gleaned.

Here goes…