Hello ARCers!!  I check this site frequently, and I figured it was about time I posted some of my work!  This is my most recent project, Revell/Germany's 90s offering of the Concorde in 1/144.  A buddy of mine gave the kit to me close to 3 years ago expecting me to finish it that summer.  After an extensive break from modelling (mostly out of laziness) I picked up the kit again and finished it for him this summer.  What was great was the look on his face when I finished it and showed up to his house with it, not only was he not expecting it to be finished, but he didn't expect me to throw it onto a base!

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It's unfortunate that this kit is one of the few Concorde offerings out there because it was a true pain to build.  I had massive problems with seams especially around where the root chord meets with the fuselage and the where the engines attach to the wings.  I spent the majority of my time on the seams on this kit.  It could also be the fact that the last model I built was the 'shake and bake' Revell 1/48th F-15E...

The kit came with a lousy plastic nose pitot tube (is it a pitot tube?), so I stole a sewing needle from my mom's sewing kit. 

The paint is Testors gloss paint straight from the can, all clear coats were done with Future Floor Polish from the bottle into my Badger 350.  Dave requested a gloss finish (which I hate, it gives it a 'display model' look rather than a 'real airplane' look), so no dullcoats were applied.

The next tricky part was the decals.  I only have one airliner kit under my belt, the newer Hasegawa 777 in American Airlines colors, which was a snap.  Even the decals on the Hasegawa kit were easy to deal with and lined up well.  This kit was a nightmare, the red stripe down the fuselage was most certainly the biggest pain, I was lucky that I somehow ended up with 2 sheets of decals for I messed the old decals up numerous times.  The tail insignia was another huge pain, especially with the antennas on each side.  In the end I shaved each antenna off and replaced them with sheet plastic after the decals had settled.  Frequently the decals were the incorrect size and needed to be shaped down with some cutting.  The kits directions also gave the wrong places to put the decals, so I had to use reference material for the majority of the decals.

 I was marching into uncharted territory with the base.  The wood is a piece of Oak door trim that I bought at Home Depot that I sanded, stained and sealed (something I've never done before), however I was very happy with the results.  The BA Concorde logo is a picture of the luggage tags used when the plane was in service around the late '80s taken from an Ebay auction.  It's simply printer paper Elmers glued to the base.  A quick coat of future gives the logo a glossy finish that somewhat matches the base's polyurethane finish.  This was my first time building a 'model on a stick' and I absolutely love the look. I'll be certain to try the same thing in the future!