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…