The deHavilland DH-86 is an important aeroplane in Australia’s civil aviation history and so I’ve been keen to make one for many years. Recently Arctic Decals released a simple but effective kit in 1/144 and here is the result. The markings of for one of the Holyman’s Airways DH-86s that crashed fatally, this on in October 1935.
Making a couple of JetStar Airways Airbus A.320s was part of my plan to make a set of all the A.320s that had flown in Australia and New Zealand. When I got around to doing the research I discovered that JetStar A.320s all look more or less the same except for the airline’s logos on the fuselage side. Hawkeye make options for the two most commonly used logos and I discovered that the Oldmodels Jetstar A.320 decal sheet has the logos for the other two less common ones. (Jetstar A.320s have also appeared with ‘JetStar Asia’, ‘JetStar Pacific’ and ‘JetStar Japan’ logos but a modeller has to draw the line somewhere. The kits are from Zvezda, the main fuselage colour is Tamiya rattle can Mica Silver and the decals come from Hawkeye, Oldmodels and 8S.
To begin, here’s VH-JQL in the original JetStar livery.
Next, here’s VH-VGR in the current main JetStar livery.
Here’s VH-JQL again, this time in an interim livery in 2016.
Finally, here’s VH-VFF in another livery from around 2012.
And here’s one I made earlier.
I made this Matchbox Grumman F9F-4 in August 1982 so I don’t remember much about it. The paint is probably good old Modelmasters enamel paints and the decals look to have come straight out of the box too.
