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Revell 1/144 scale Concorde	Airfix 1/144 scale Concorde

Reviewer: Pete Noyle (peternoyle@kw.igs.net)
Kit Review submitted:  14 May 2004

The Aircraft:

Supersonic commercial airliner.

Span                       83 ft 10 ins             (25.6 m)                 

Length                   202 ft 4 ins             (61.66 m)                                                               

Height                    40 ft                        (12.2 m)

Range                     Typical with 100 passengers plus baggage - 3,500 nm (4,030 statute miles) Note that ‘range’ is dependant on many factors, especially the air temperature at high altitude.

Max altitude permitted        60,000 ft.                Usual cruise is about 58,000 ft.

Speed                     Maximum operating Mach # 2.04. Usual cruise is Mach 2.00.

Crew       9              Captain, Co-pilot, Flight Engineer. Six cabin staff. (6 for 100 passengers = one cabin staff for seventeen passengers).

Passengers            up to 128 luxury class, BA Concorde’s are fitted with 100 seats.

Engines                  Four Rolls Royce (Bristol Siddeley) Olympus 593 Mk 610 two spool turbojets with variable intake and fully controlled after burner (by SNECMA) plus variable nozzle thrust reverser.

Concorde is unlike anything seen before and will stand alone until some other airliner manufacturer has the courage to make a passenger aircraft that can –

·         Fly at twice the speed of sound.

·         Fly at up to 60,000 ft.

·         Carry passengers in luxury.

·         Can complete a long distance (trans Atlantic) flight on one fill of fuel.

·         Can do all the above over and over again, to commercial schedules.

First flights – Prototype F-WTSS, aircraft 001, from Toulouse, France in March 1969 (now preserved at Le Bourget). G-BSST, aircraft 002, from Filton in April 1969 (now preserved at Yeovilton).

Aircraft 01 and 02 were the pre-production aircraft.

First production aircraft 201 flew from Toulouse December 1973.

Where to See Concorce:

United States

Aircraft 205          F-BVFA                 At Smithsonian's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport, Washington DC.

Aircraft 210           G-BOAD                New York, at the Air and Space Museum, goes on show in 2004.

Aircraft 214           G-BOAG                At Seattle's museum of flight, the aircraft is open to the public on selected days.

United Kingdom

Aircraft 002           G-BSST                  At Yeovilton.

Aircraft 101           G-AXDN                To be housed in a new exhibit at Duxford where much of the sub-assembly work was done.

Aircraft 202           G-BBDG To be at Brooklands Museum at Weybridge. At present in storage at Filton.

Aircraft 204           G-BOAC                In storage at Manchester Airport (not on view), by April 2004 should be in a ‘viewing park’ at Manchester.

Aircraft 206           G-BOAA                At Heathrow (not on view) to move to East Fortune near Edinburgh for display in 2004.

Aircraft 208           G-BOAB                At Heathrow on display airside on a taxiway at Heathrow and then on display as gate guardian

for the new Heathrow terminal 5.

Aircraft 216           G-BOAF At Filton. G-BOAF, the last Concorde and, after her last ever landing on November 26th, was de-commissioned in the Brabazon hangar, before being moved outside by the A38, next to the Royal Mail building, for temporary storage over the winter. Airbus and the Bristol Aero Collection are in talks as to the best way to open her to the public next year. A hard standing area will possibly be constructed next to the West Gate's staff car park.

France

Aircraft 001           F-WTSS                 At the Concorde hall, Le Bourget.

Aircraft 201           F-WTSB                At Airbus HQ at Toulouse.

Aircraft 209           F-BVFC                  In storage pending the construction of Airbus' new aviation museum at Toulouse.

Aircraft 213           F-BVSD                  At the Concorde hall at the Le Bourget Air and Space museum.

Aircraft 215           F-BVFF                  At Charles de Gaulle, where the aircraft is stored. May go on display at the new Terminal 2E.

Germany

Aircraft 207           F-BVFB                  Will be at Sinsheim, next to their existing Tu144.

Barbados

Aircraft 212           G-BOAE At Grantley Adams Airport (Barbados was a BA holiday destination for Concorde).

With the inclusion of Aircraft 203, F-BTSC that crashed July 2000, a total of 20 aircraft.

Anecdotes:

No other airliner (the Russian Tupolev Tu 114 – the Konkordski – was only used on freight runs), looks like Concorde with her pointed nose and sexy delta wings. Wherever she went a crowd appeared, she had that effect. I make no apology for calling her ‘her’ – she was a lady and to see her you would understand why. Stand close, she looks down her nose at you, imperious. Her wings have the soft curves of the female hip. She was tended by a retinue of persons, like a queen ant or a queen bee. Her servants were devoted to her.

The most tested aircraft ever made, she has never lost a passenger – the incident at Paris was not Concorde’s failing; she was brought low by a simple piece of metal on the runway. If that piece of metal had been a couple of meters to the right or to the left, Concorde would have been on her way as normal. Brought low by a simple piece of metal on the runway.

I know how she was tested – I was there, I saw it, albeit in a minor way, but I saw it unfold at Filton and Patchway where the British Concorde’s and the Olympus engines were made. Never in my wildest dreams, did I think that I would ever – ever – fly her. But I did, I had the CONCORDE EXPERIENCE, flying from Heathrow to Kennedy in just three hours and twenty five minutes, (in fact we landed one hour before we took off!), sitting in Conolly leather comfort. Ain’t time travel marvelous!

The transition from sub to supersonic is quite unremarkable. The numbers on the front panel of the passenger cabin just flip over – Mach 0.99, 1.00, 1.01. Not much to it really. At 52,000 ft you can see the curvature of the Earth and the horizon is an electric blue gradually darkening to blackness overhead. The edge of space in your shirt sleeves, drinking coffee with a three course gourmet lunch.

Even at the altitude that Concorde worked at, the rarified atmosphere flowing over the wings and nose caused friction and built up heat, so much so that aluminium would soften and fail. (Maximum temperature allowed at the nose could not exceed 127 deg C). Cold fuel continuously flowed through the wings and nose, cooling the skin. She grew about 10 inches with this heating and you could feel the warmth coming through the windows. Special paint was developed that would stretch as well, and not peel off.

As the speed of sound was exceeded Concorde’s center of gravity was moved progressively rearward by pumping fuel into the rear fuselage tanks. On deceleration the fuel was pumped forward and at landing the fuel was distributed about the fore and aft trim tanks to prevent a too high a landing angle of attack.

Yes – it is true, each Concorde flight had two aircraft prepared, and one was back-up and would step in if any snag is found with the appointed aircraft. Taxi to the runway was very quick, other aircraft waiting as she moved past. Can you imagine the captains of the other aircraft – “Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking. Out of your windows you will see Concorde pass us by. We will hold here until she has gone.”

If you need to know how much a Concorde ticket cost – you could not have afforded to go.

History:

The first talk about a Supersonic Transport (SST) in the UK took place in the 1950’s. At that time Britain saw commercial transport as serving the British Empire and not the trans Atlantic routes so two supersonic aircraft types were considered, one long range and one medium range, both spheres of thought taking facility from the other to both’s detriment. Britain was however well positioned to enter the SST market; it had deHavilland with its Comet experience and all that that entailed, Vickers with the Viscount, a successful aircraft, and Bristol with their background of the Brabazon and the Britannia. On the propulsion side Rolls Royce had the Avon and Bristol had the Olympus. It soon became clear that Britain with its fractured aircraft industry would not be able to cope with the R&D needed for the project and other countries would need to step in as partners. Really, only France could help, the French aircraft industry had reorganized itself after World War 2 and had two strong contenders, Dassault who made fighters and Sud Aviation who already made the successful Caravel twin engine short range jet liner. So began probably the first true collaborative aerospace venture where two companies in two countries came together as more or less equal partners.

Produced in both France and England (French produced aircraft were model 101 and British production was model 102), Concorde forged the protocols of international cooperation when it comes to aerospace matters. Two countries, England and France, speaking different languages, using different measuring systems, feet and inches in England and meters and millimeters in France, factories hundreds of (miles English – kilometers, French) apart, came together and made a dream. Critics called the effort a waste of money and several times the project neared cancellation. The cost factor dogged Concorde even to its final day and yet the achievement was equal to the US and Russia reaching into space. It was, if you like, Europe’s space venture.

Full scale versions of the airframe were dedicated to stress, heating and cooling and other static forces. A Fairey Delta 2 was modified to test Concorde’s delta wing at high speed and a completely new aircraft, the Handley Page HP115, was built to test a slender delta planform at low speeds. The Olympus engines were flight tested in the bomb bay of a Vulcan nuclear bomber (XA903). A compete fuel system rig was constructed at Filton which moved around rather like a flight simulator does today. There were many novel features in the design. The main undercarriage ‘shortens’ as it retracts, the distance between the engine cowlings and the fuselage dictates this. Concorde pioneered ‘fly by wire’ where much of the flight envelope is controlled by computer (this before 1969!). The engines and afterburner had computers called ‘amplifiers.’ Triple redundancy was built into many of the systems. All this was costly and the British government threatened over and over again to pull in the purse strings. Fortunately the contract between BAC and Sud Aviation and Bristol Engines and SNECMA was binding and Concorde survived the politics, even surviving the hysterical debates that raged on both sides of the Atlantic about such things as the sonic boom and damage to the ozone layer. Several visits to France and England by US authorities tried to have the project cancelled.

A Short Chronology:

1968        August                  First taxi runs at Toulouse with aircraft 001.

1969        March                    First flight of 001.

                April                       First flight of 002 from Filton.

                June                        At the Paris air show.

1970        March                    002 achieves Mach 1.

                September             At Farnborough air show.

1971        January                  100 supersonic flights chalked up.

                August                  100 Mach 2 flights chalked up.

                September             Pre-production aircraft 01 rolled out at Filton.

1972        July                         China signs preliminary agreement to buy 2 aircraft (later 3). BOAC orders 5 Concorde’s, Air France orders four.

                October                  Iran Air signs preliminary agreement to buy 2 aircraft plus an option on a third.

1973        January                  002 in Johannesburg, South Africa for ‘hot and high’ trials.

                                                Pan Am and TWA decide not to take up their options to buy (waiting for the Lockheed or Boeing SST).

                September             02 visits Fort Worth, USA. Flight time record London to Washington broken at 3 hours 33 minutes.

                October                  001 retires at Le Bourget.

                December              First production Concorde, aircraft 201, makes its first flight.

1974        February                02 completes low temperature trials at Fairbanks, Alaska, USA. Second production aircraft flies.

                June                        Static test fuselage at CEAT tested to destruction.

                September             Flight testing reaches 3,000 hours, 1,000 hours supersonic.

1975        February                Passenger evacuation certification trials completed. Tropical icing trials completed.

                May                        Special category C of A awarded for aircraft 203 and ‘endurance’ flying commenced.

                October                  BA and Air France open reservations for regular Concorde services.

                December              Concorde receives its British C of A. Air France receives its first Concorde.

1976        January                  BA begins first service, London to Bahrain. Air France begins service Paris to Rio via Dakar.

                February                Concorde services to New York and Washington begin on a trial basis.

                March                    Aircraft 002 retires to Yeovilton.

                April                       Air France extends service to Caracas via the Azores.

                May                        Services from Paris and London to Washington begin.

                November              Britain’s Concorde flight test centre at Fairford closes.

                December              Air France returns aircraft 203 to Aerospatiale.

1977        August                  01 retires to Duxford.

                October                  London to Singapore flights, via Bahrain, announced.

                November              HM the Queen and Prince Phillip return from Barbados on Concorde. Regular services London and Paris to New York begin.

                December              Service to Singapore begins.

1978                                                            Malaysia objects to supersonic overflights.

August                  BA carries its 100,000 Concorde passenger.

                September             Air France opens service to Mexico City via Washington.

1979        January                  US type certificate granted. Braniff begins subsonic service from Washington to Dallas/Fort Worth.

                February                British government writes off BA’s purchase costs. The government to receive 80% of operating surpluses.

                April                       Last production Concorde (216) flies from Filton. All unsold aircraft to be placed with BA or Air France.

                December              BA Concorde flies from London to New York in a never to be repeated 2 hours 59 minutes 36 seconds.

1980        June                        Braniff service ceases. Singapore service discontinued.

1981        January                  Five years in service, 50,000 hours, 15,800 flights, 700,000 passengers.

1982        March                    Air France service to Caracas comes to an end.

                August                  British government states that it will no longer fund Concorde.

1983        January                  Fastest trans Atlantic crossing from New York to London in 2 hours 56 minutes.

                March                    Inaugural flight to Miami through Washington, thrice weekly thereafter.

                September             Distance record set, Washington to Nice, 4.255 statute miles.

                November              Inaugural charter London to Seattle via New York.

1985        February                First commercial service London to Sydney in a record time of 17 hours 3 minutes. London to Cape Town in 8 hours 8 minutes.

1986                                                            10 years of service.

2003                                        The end.

Filton and Patchway:

A note about the Filton plant. British Aerospace is located at Filton, a suburb of Bristol, England and, at neighbouring Patchway are the Rolls Royce facilities. Their proximity is not by accident, the Bristol Aeroplane Company owned both plants at one time and it was here that Bristol Beaufighters and Beauforts were made together with the Hercules and Centaurus engines to power them. To the uninitiated where the two factories start and end is not distinguishable. Concorde’s were assembled in a huge eight acre hanger called the Brabazon Hanger after the leviathan Bristol Brabazon airliner of 1948. This eight engine monster was designed for two kinds of air travel – for day time it would seat 150 passengers on two decks and for night time it would have sleeping berths for 80 passengers plus a promenade and a dining room. Wingspan was 230 ft (70.1 m) – 35 ft more than a 747. To enable the aircraft to climb into the air a special runway, 8,000 ft long was constructed, the village of Charlton being demolished to make way for it. Only one ‘Brab’ was made.

For me it was easy to pass from one factory to the other and, as a friend of mine was working on the fuel system test rig in the Brab Hanger, I often slipped away for a visit. At least three Concorde’s could be seen in various stages of completion, together with some other aircraft ‘parked’ out of the rain, one of which was the Canberra chase plane. The hanger now belongs to Airbus UK.

She’s really quite unsociable is Concorde. Her four Olympian thrusters are horrendously noisy – far too loud for today’s noise regulations, and her sonic boom-boom startles the innocent. So, she is confined to flying over oceans, flying subsonic over land. A development, Concorde B, would have addressed the take-off noise question and with up-rated Olympus engines the thirsty after-burners could be done away with. Enlargement to the wings would have provided greater fuel space and increased the range. It didn’t happen though.

And now she is gone, possibly never to grace the skies again. She lives on, like an Egyptian Mummy, preserved in museums.

OK, that’s enough about the aircraft. What about the kits!

Kit Details:

Revell kit # 04257 comes in a sturdy end opening box containing the fuselage halves, wings and a single spru in white plus a single clear spru, all in a sealed plastic bag. Panel lines are finely engraved in keeping with the scale of the model. Instructions and decal sheet are loose in the box. There is some flash but perhaps that is to be expected, the moulds carry the date 1991. The top of the box shows a photograph of G-BOAG (Alpha Golf), in the British Airways livery style of the 1990’s with a smaller photo of Air France F-BVFA. The decal refers to G-BOAC and F-BVFA. On the side of the box are some nice photographs of an actual aircraft at the cockpit area (external), nose wheel, main wheels, thrust reversers and fin. Very useful for detailing. Note that BA Concorde’s were later painted in BA’s Utopia scheme.

The box calls for a skill level of 3, i.e. a kit with up to 100 parts. This kit has 49 parts according to the instruction sheet.

© Pete Noyle 2004

Instructions:

Seven pages containing general assembly instructions in 7 languages, warning texts in 18 languages and assembly instructions with easy to understand diagrams of the eleven stages of construction plus three view drawings of the completed model giving the painting guide and decal locations. All (except the decal locations), easy to understand.

Construction:

We all make mistakes or have mistakes thrust upon us by the kit itself. Mine are recorded under the heading AW GAWD.

Step 1 Fuselage halves.

I painted the cockpit inner surface with flat Gray before joining the fuselage halves together. This step calls for the fitting of the cockpit windows but I did not relish the task of masking such small parts so I left them off, glazing the windows with ModelMaster clear parts cement. (Windows up to about 5 mm square can be glazed by dipping a brush handle into a small puddle of cement and applying it to the window opening. Slowly removing the brush handle will produce a film of cement that will harden clear. This ‘window’ surface can be painted over and when the model is completed the film can be removed with a sharp knife. Re-applying the glazing technique produces new windows). The fuselage halves came together well with little step to be sanded off. No filler was needed.

Step 2 Droop Snoot.

Concorde wings are designed for travel and performance at Mach 2 and 50,000 ft and at sea level and at slow speeds of approach they leave a little bit to be desired. Concorde comes in at a very full angle of attack, so much so that the crew cannot see the runway, the nose section is simply in the way. To overcome this difficulty the nose swings downward giving the crew the same view of the runway as that afforded to a jumbo jet pilot. Step 2 describes the droop snoot assembly and illustrates the choice of position available – drooped for landing or raised for normal flight and passenger boarding. The two halves of the droop snoot were not well matched and needed considerable sanding to smooth the join. I masked the visor at this point, I thought that it would be easier than when the visor is in position. A 13 grm weight needs to be installed now.

AW GAWD. The front windshield was an exercise in frustration. It consists of a single flat pane of clear plastic with no ‘frame’ to fit it into. Mine kept falling inside the fuselage so in the end I gave up and used the glazing technique mentioned above. I made a mistake next, I painted the front face of the fuselage Silver before I attached the droop snoot – it should have been white. Also I painted the area under the visor silver – I should have used mat Black.

Step 3 Wings to fuselage.

Apart from a little warping the wings fitted well. There was a nasty gap at the upper wing section to fuselage join that needed some filler.

Step 4 & 5 Main undercarriage.

The undercarriage assembly is very clean and needs little or no flash removal. I added scratch made water spray control bars to the assembly using the picture on the box plus illustrations from the vast numbers of web pages available. Paint used was ModelMaster Aluminum and flat Black.

Step 6 Nose wheel.

As with the main undercarriage the mouldings are crisp and clean and need little attention. I added a scratch made anti spray guard, once again using the box picture as a guide.

Step 7 Undercarriage to main assembly.

My model is with undercarriage down however I did not install the undercarriage at this point although I did add the undercarriage doors. The nose probe (called a pilot head in my book), was fitted.

Step 8 & 9 Engine cowls.

Some work is needed here. Each Olympus engine sits behind its own intake, the engines do not share the intake as the model would suggest. A divider is needed to sit behind the intake splitter (part 34 / 35) and the engine front face (part 36). I made mine from 0.020 sheet plastic. The intake inner surface should be painted Silver and the engine face Aluminum. The variable exhaust nozzle and thrust reverser buckets (part 36), should be painted before attachment to the carrier assembly (part 37 / 38). I painted the inside surface mat Black and the outer surface a mix of mat Black and Aluminum. The carrier assembly needs exhaust pipes added to them. It turns out that a ball pen case has near enough the same inside diameter as the exhaust hole so I cut four lengths at 1 cm and glued them to the carrier. Small squares of plastic were glued to the pen tubes at the inner end. The complete inner surface was painted mat Black and the inner surface of the carrier (where the thrust reverser buckets will fit), was painted Aluminum with a drop of mat Black added. The outer surface of the carrier assembly was painted semi gloss Black although the instructions call for gloss Black. I did not install the completed thrust reverser assembly at this time.

Step 10 Engines, one VHF antennae and elivon actuator cowls.

One of the engine assemblies did not sit comfortably against the wing. A goodly amount of trimming was necessary before I was satisfied that I could apply enough glue to the mating surface to keep the thing in place, in fact at one point the engine fell off!

Step 11 Antennae.

Two antennae are to be fitted in this step.

Painting:

I am not sure what particular shade of White Concorde’s are painted. I used TremClad automotive flat white (from an aerosol can), as both a primer and finish coat. The paint goes on quite thickly but being a flat coat it does not run as a gloss coat would. Very little filler was needed after the first coat. I masked off the engines where the gloss Black is required and applied that colour with a brush. The complete model was then given a coat of Future to bring up the luster of the aircraft.

See also ‘Decals’ for more painting tips.

Final Assembly:

The undercarriage and thrust reverser assemblies were then attached.

Decals:

AW GAWD now the wheels fall off!

I decided that my model would be the Air France subject. The decal sheet provides stencils common to all aircraft as well as specific details for BA and AF. The decals do apply very easily and snug down well. Print is of course over scale but it is nice to read such things as ‘no step’ or ‘do not walk here.’ The fin decal just covers the VOR antennae on the fin so I slit the decal at this location to allow the film to settle above and below the blade like antennae. Some photographs show the VOR antennae painted to match the fin logo and some remain white. I left mine white.

There are a lot of decals.  One by one I worked my way through the process, marking the drawing off as each decal was applied. I ended up with some left over and some missing. Precise location of each decal was hard to determine, the drawings are simply not large enough and the profusion of lines on the underside drawing did not match the etched lines of the model. This was especially true in the case of the static discharge pads either side of the forward fuselage.

Item 4 on the decal sheet is the BA fin but on the drawing it is ‘Air France.’ The 4 should be 6.

All along the edge of the wing upper surface are dashed lines to show the limit of safe walking areas. These are moulded into the wings as depressions and are also supplied as decals. The trouble is the depressions and the decals do not line up. I did not apply the decals but filled each depression with water soluble gray paint, using a damp cotton bud to clean up any over-painted area. The windows were a similar case where depressions illustrate the window positions and each window has to be painted black. At the rear there are three holes in the tail cone – the fuel dump outlet and two other fuel vent outlets a little forward of the dump, and these were highlighted in the same way. On the wing top surface the area over the undercarriage bay is very thin and not a walkway area. This is depicted by small depressions in the moulding so the water soluble paint was added here as well (there was no decal).

Options:

The only options are droop snoot up or down and undercarriage up or down.

Versions:

Concorde is one of a kind; there are no versions although the two prototypes did vary in appearance from the production machines in that they did not have the elongated tail section. Singapore Airlines did fly one Concorde where the left side of the fin carried that airline’s logo and the other side had the BA logo. Braniff also operated one Concorde between Washington DC and Texas with a “combined” US/UK registration. One Air France aircraft was done out in Pepsi blue as an advert for the pop drink maker. Decals for these aircraft sometimes crop up on eBay.

Accuracy:

Details	Real Aircraft	Model Equivalent
Span	83 ft 10 ins - (25.6 m)	82 ft 3 ins
Length	202 ft 4 ins - (61.66 m)	204 ft
Height	40 ft - (12.2 m)
Main undercarriage track	25 ft 4 in	25 ft 6 ins
Distance nose wheel to main u/c centerline	59 ft 8 in	59 ft
Fuselage width	9 ft 5 in	10 ft
Fuselage height	10 ft 10 in	10 ft 6 ins

Conclusions:

Well, she is a Concorde all right! It just looks the part. Easy to build, the skill level of 3 is an accurate assessment. Apart from the decal situation (where Revell have really let itself down), highly recommended. The enthusiast can use this kit as a basis for detailing with confidence. I did not like the recessed wing boundary markings, they make the final model look quite ugly, and I think that Revell should have confined these markings to decals only.

© Pete Noyle 2004

Kit Details:

Airfix kit 06182. This kit is still in production, mine was produced by Heller in France.

Two fuselage halves and two sprue's in gray plastic are loose in a top opening flimsy box. The box is only just big enough for the contents and on my model either end of each fuselage half was damaged. In addition one of the engine cowls had a bent intake lip. The moulded parts bear the date 1978 and after 25 years, wear is beginning to show. There is a lot of flash to be cleaned up. Cabin windows are ‘see through’ in that they are holes in the fuselage moulding.

In this latest issue of the kit two decal sheets are provided, one with Air France and British Airways logo’s appropriate to the aircraft in 1988 and a second with the later BA ‘Utopia’ logo as applied in 1997. The box art depicts an image of G-BOAF in flight sporting the later livery.

A skill level of 2 is marked on the box.

© Pete Noyle 2004

Instructions:

Four pages provide the following –

                Introduction to the aircraft in three languages.

                General assembly instructions (with explanations of the icons used) in 12 languages.

                Easy to follow assembly drawings in 9 steps.

Three view drawings of the aircraft showing the decal locations for BA and AF in 1988 and BA only in 1997 when BA introduced the new Utopia livery.

Construction:

Steps 1and 2 - Fuselage halves.

Step 1 deals with the left fuselage side and Step 2 with the right. Both are essentially identical and deal with the installation of the cockpit windows and passenger doors. No reference is made regarding interior colours.

Look carefully at the cabin windows, on my kit some were blanked by flash. The doors do not fit well and in some cases small squares of plastic will have to be applied behind them to blank off gaps. The right hand fuselage half of my kit was quite warped.

I painted the cockpit area mat Gray.

Steps 3 and 4 - Engine nacelles.

The instructions call for the inside surface of the nacelles to be painted white from the intake lip to the ‘engine face.’ The central divider strip (parts 13 and 15), that detail the intake variable doors should be painted before gluing to the nacelle bath tub. While the white paint is in use it is a good idea to paint the area of the lower wing where the nacelle is to be fitted. I question the choice of mat Black for the engine face; I think that, even with no engine detail, this surface should be ‘aluminium.’ Using Microsoft ‘Paint’ program I quickly created an engine face where radial lines represented the compressor blades. I painted a postage label Aluminum and printed the engine face on to it. By cutting out the small squares I could use the labels own adhesive to attach the image to the kit part. In the tunnel darkness of the intakes, the engine faces look almost ready for start-up. Resist the temptation to add the thrust reverser carrier plate (parts 49 and 51) at this stage because once the engine nacelle is on the wing the back end of the nacelle does not quite line up with the wing trailing edge. Install these parts as shown in step 9 but after painting.

Step 5 - Fuselage halves and wings.

I installed the 5 g weight as required and glued the fuselage halves together.

AW GAWD Before the wings go on a major mould error has to be corrected. On the top of the kit fuselage are three raised areas (ADF bulges), that used to be featured on the earlier Concorde’s. Aircraft G-BOAF illustrated on the box does not have these features but has a single long ‘cowl’ that in 1/144 scale is 52 mm long, 2 mm wide, 1 mm high and located 25 mm in front of the fin where it meets the fuselage. So, the three bumps have to be removed and the new ADF cowl scratch made.

© Pete Noyle 2004

                                                Top view of the fuselage showing the ADF bulges that need to be removed

I strongly recommend that the visor, clear part 21, be dipped in Future overnight and then when dry, masked off before installing on the fuselage. Note that the area below the visor (where the nose weight has probably been fitted), should be painted mat Anti Glare Black.

With the fuselage modifications complete and any filling needed attended to (such as the doors), the wings can be attached.

When Concorde is at rest the hydraulic pressure provided by the engines decays and the control surfaces droop. The elivons take up a position of about 20 degrees down and the rudders can be left or right depending on where the wind blows! I decided that I would incorporate this feature in my model. Using my modelers saw I cut the split line of the elivons and the two rudders and then slit the elivon and rudder actuator cowls. A light score along the hinge line meant that the control surfaces could be bent into the desired droop position with fingers. A spot of super glue strengthens the hinge line and tends to fill any minute cracks.

With the wings fitted to the fuselage the gaps at the mating surfaces can be seen and attended to. The left wing on my model did not line up with the moulded fillet on the fuselage at the leading edge (due to a bit of distortion in the wing mould). I used slivers of 0.010 plastic to fill the gap and once the glue was dry I scraped and sanded the fillet to conform to the wing. Other gaps were filled in this way, then applying thin layers of putty and smoothing down with 400 grit wet & dry used wet.

A lot of this filling and smoothing will remove the raised panel lines but this is not such a tragedy as it may seem. Concorde is a very smooth aircraft and I would suggest that only the droop snoot/fuselage line needs to be highlighted.

Steps 6 and 7 - Main undercarriage.

The design of the undercarriage, once again, illustrates the era that the original moulds hail from. The very fine pin-like adjusting screws located just above the bogie had a lot of flash on them, and being so delicate, removing the flash became a problem. Add to this that two of the pins were severely bent then it seemed that a complete replacement of these small parts would be necessary. I cut them off and then drilled 0.020 diameter holes in the main leg. Next I melted the end of a piece of 0.020 plastic rod by holding it close to a candle flame until it formed a small blob. These little ‘pins’ were then attached to the main undercarriage leg at the holes previously drilled.

Scratch made spray guards were attached to the bogies at the leading face.

Step 8 - Nose wheel, tail and main undercarriage installation.

At this stage the decision has to be made whether to the model with the undercarriage up or down. If up, then the second part of Step 8 should be followed where the doors are cemented in place in the closed position. The first part of Step 8, undercarriage down, is much more interesting.

Nose wheel. The moulding for the nose wheel leg shows a rugged triangle of plastic at the top. This, on the aircraft, is actually three tubes, the nose wheel leg in the centre and two side rods to give bending support. I removed the solid ‘wings’ and rounded off the leg section to conform with the lower leg moulding and then added two support rods produced from 0.040 diameter plastic. Assemble the nose wheel, paint it and add detailing as you wish but don’t install it yet (I added the unique splash guard that prevents spray from entering the engines). Add the two forward u/c doors (parts 35 & 36) to the wheel well in the closed position (the doors are only open at the time of lowering or raising the nose wheel), and cement the two small doors (47 & 48) in the open position.

At the tail wheel part 42 should be attached but the wheel assembly should not be (although it should be detailed).

The main gear doors (part 38 & 39), should be installed closed and the smaller doors cemented in place in the open position, and as before, the main undercarriage assembly should not be installed yet.

Step 9 - Engine cowls and variable nozzle/reverse thrust buckets.

Install the engine cowls but not the reverse thrust carrier plates and variable reverse thrust buckets.

I installed a scratch made ‘pilot head’ at the nose, using a piece of stretched sprue. This part was added last of all, I thought that it was an ideal candidate for being broken off, sticking out of the front like that!

Painting:

I made up a paint stand from coat hanger wire and sprayed the primer coat. After attending to the odd gap a second coat of mat White was applied. The masking for rear part of the engine nacelles was applied after the white had dried for several days and then the rear part of the nacelles painted mat Black.

The whole model was then given a coat of Future to bring up the shine.

Decals:

© Pete Noyle 2004

In this latest issue two decal sheets are provided, one with Air France and British Airways logo’s appropriate to the aircraft in 1988 and a second with the later BA ‘Utopia’ logo as applied in 1997. I settled for the BA colours of 1997 having already made the Revell Concorde in Air France livery.

Having the Revell kit was fortuitous because I was able to make use of the wing boundary markers that did not get used on that kit. The Airfix decals are minimal and provide only the larger patterns, no stencils at all.

Final Assembly:

Add the undercarriage and reverse thrust assemblies and it’s all done.

Options:

The only options available are undercarriage up or down and cabin doors open or closed.

Versions:

Concorde is one of a kind; there are no versions although the two prototypes did vary in appearance from the production machines in that they did not have the elongated tail section. Singapore Airlines did fly one Concorde where the left side of the fin carried that airline’s logo and the other side had the BA logo. Braniff also operated one Concorde between Washington DC and Texas with a “combined” US/UK registration. One Air France aircraft was done out in Pepsi blue as an advert for the pop drink maker. Decals for these aircraft sometimes crop up on eBay.

Accuracy:

Conclusions:

A very easy and satisfying kit to build and I recommend it to all, experienced and novice alike. The only bit of kit bashing that needs to be done is the modification to the ADF housing and if you are modeling an older version of the aircraft then even that need not be done. Now that all Concorde’s are ‘down’ and in museums it is nice to have one on the display shelf, she was after all a tremendous achievement for its time – an achievement that has yet to be matched.

© Pete Noyle 2004

****************************************************************

Comparisons:

Summary of kit differences -

Final Choice:

I will not say “you get what you pay for” because you can pay what you like for one of these kits and as far as I know, the Revell kit is not on offer right now and the Airfix kit is still in production (although hard to get, it seems to fly off the shelves as soon as they are stocked). With that statement I cannot quote prices, I bought my Revell kit on eBay and the Airfix kit at my local model store.

All in all I would go for the Airfix kit if you have limited skills and the Revell for the more adventurous. The Airfix kit needs surgery to the fuselage to clean up the ADF bulges and replace them with scratch made parts, but, you may want to have open cabin doors so that kit will fill the bill. The decal sheet is minimal but easier to follow than the Revell one. If you want a drooped snoot, then the Revell kit is the one to choose. Neither kit ‘does it all’ but each one does produce a model without too many tears.

Perhaps it needs a third company to produce another Concorde kit incorporating the best of both? Oh, and how about one in 72^nd scale?

© Pete Noyle 2004

Model from the Revell kit behind and the Airfix kit model in the foreground.

References:

Web sites

• Claimed to be the most comprehensive Concorde web site (it is very good) www.concordesst.com

• Over 500 pictures of Concorde on www.airliners.net

Books

• The Concorde Story, 10 years in service. As the title suggests the book deals with the early years of operating Concorde (in BA service mainly). Author Christopher Orlebar, Temple Press 1986.

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