Revell 1/144 Concorde, previewed by Richard F

KIT #:	04257
PRICE:	RMB 136.00
DECALS:	Three British Airways options
REVIEWER:	Richard F
NOTES:

HISTORY

Concorde. In many eyes, one of the most beautiful aircraft ever flown.

Fast, glamourous, and graceful, it flew commercial transatlantic service with British Airways and Air France for more than two decades. Gone forever since 2003, those of us who never got to fly inside a Concorde can only imagine the experience from youtube or by looking at one of the many preserved airframes in European or American museums.

Those of you lucky enough to have ridden a Concorde can only treasure that memory.

This is a bit of an oldie but a goodie. It seems to have been first released in 1983, and re-released in 1993 with British Airways and Air France decals. The kit I have has copyright 1991 in the plastic and 2005 on the decals.

This boxing comes with British Airways' so-called "Landor" livery - the elegant blue flash on the tailfin with the silver coat of arms, and the red stripes that evoke the Union Jack. It comes with two variants of the later "Chatham" livery, with a more stylised Union Jack and no fuselage-length stripe. The decals for the second of these later schemes seem a bit pixellated for my liking, in the area where they try to represent the shading or blending effect.

Otherwise the decals look very nice. Interestingly, the instructions recommend you look at airliners.net for images of the plane you want to model (you get serial letters to do any BA plane). The record-holder for the transatlantic crossing, G-BOAD, comes with ready-made serials. For the others, you can chop off the D and use the other letters instead. (G-BOAD did the crossing in 2 hours 52 minutes and 59 seconds, wheels-off to wheels-down). Also, the decals offer you two outlines for the front passenger door - one that is "life size" and the other one that fits the outline on the kit. Obviously the mould must have been inaccurate in that regard.

There are no decals for Air France in this boxing. Earlier boxings have it and I'm sure there are aftermarket ones available too.

Mine had plenty of flash and while the surface detail is quite nice (engraved, and not overdone), the kit itself is very basic. There is nothing in the way of undercarriage bays or much detail inside the big engine pods (basic turbine facings and very simplistic afterburner nozzles are all you get). There is no cockpit but given Concorde's tiny windows, this isn't really a problem.

I read a comment on a forum somewhere that suggested the kit "looks wrong" when the nose is modeled in its dropped position. Concordes were regularly seen parked with their noses up, so this is no problem if you want yours to look accurate but still be "gear down". An excellent British Airways documentary (at the link below) shows the plane parked that way, and the pilots mention how important it is to avoid damage to the droop nose. Wherever possible, they seem to like to keep it in the up position.

Word has it that this offering is better overall than the old Airfix kit in the same scale. It is not a patch on the beautiful Tu-144 kit from ICM that came out last year, but it is a very decent kit of a great plane. I snapped it up when I saw it, and am building it side by side with my ICM Tu-144.