Airfix Concorde 1:144

The Anglo-French Concorde has always made heads turn at every airport from which it operated. After more than 20 years of service with British Airways and Air France, the Concorde is the world's only supersonic airliner in regular operation.

The 1:144 Airfix kit of the Concorde came out in the mid-70s. My sample was in the "Sky King" box, with old-style British Airways livery. I subsequently obtained the decal sheet for the reissue a couple years back, which includes current BA and Air France livery.

The kit is fairly simple, even for an Airfix airliner model. The combined fuselage- tail halves fit well, with a cutout for the clear windshield. The model does not include the Concorde's characteristic drooped nose, which is lowered for takeoff and landing. The wings, which consist of upper and lower halves, capture the complex curves of the real thing. They also fit well to the fuselage, although I had to fill slight gaps on the upper wing-fuselage joint with white glue.

Fit of the large engine pods to the underside of the wing was excellent; the fit of the separate engine nozzle/reverser buckets was loose, but acceptable. The landing gear looks accurate from my references. I left them and the windshield off until after painting.

I chose the Air France scheme to avoid having to fiddle with the long red BA fuselage stripe. I painted the aircraft with Testor's primer white, then polished it to a gloss with Turtle Wax Rubbing Compound (the *green* can). The engine nozzle mounts, thrust reversers and leading edges of the intakes are flat black. Although the few shots I had of the gear door interiors were tantalizingly inconclusive, my best guess was a chromate yellow color.

The thin but opaque decals went on without a hitch. I didn't even need a clear coat to hide them. The Air France tail logo has a slot cut out for the rudder servo fairing, so you'll have to match the medium blue with paint.

Passenger windows are represented by tiny (but in scale) square openings. I filled these with Krystal-Kleer. I painted the inside of the clear windshield flat flack and the outside framing gloss white. The fit of the windshield to the fuselage cutout is the worst feature of the kit. No matter how I moved it around, I was left with a gap at the front edge. After filling with white glue and painting, it's still noticable. I added a VHF blade antenna made from sheet plastic atop the forward fuselage to wrap things up.

I'm not a numbers guy, so I didn't measure how close to scale the Airfix Concorde is. It sure *looks* like the real aircraft in the Air France brouchure I used as a reference. Not a hard build either. As I remember, it took about 25 hours -- about average for me, but I'm a slow and picky builder

Les Dorr