This all orange Jetstar A320 scheme has been applied to only one aeroplane as far as I can tell. The orange paint comes from SMS and the decals from Nazca. The white decals are a little translucent and applying a second set over the first to get a better white density but I’ve always had trouble doing that kind of thing so I decided to leave sleeping cats lying, so to speak.
Azmodel offer a whole lot of interesting and intriguing short run injection moulded kits and this is one of them, Unfortunately there are some significant ‘fit issues’, so significant that most modern day modellers would probably declare this kit definitely unbuildable. For us oldtimers who cut their teeth on 1960s Frog, Airfix anf Revell kits, however, there is nothing too difficult in making this kit buildable. It is not a show stopper but I think it looks very pretty.
Out of the Time Vault
When I made this Revell 1/72 Morane N in 1975 the kit was already ten years old. It is fairly primitive by the standards of those days but really, apart from a decent cockpit, there’s not much that could be done to make this a more detailed kit. The only decals in the kit were for this Imperial Russian air force and the kit is so old that the white center of the roundels are now as yellow as the fabric colour of the rest of the model. There are more modern kits of the Morane N and one of these days I might get around to making one.
This Matchbox 1/72 Hawker Fury I was released in 1972 and I made it in 1976. The silver is the old fashioned Humbrol 11 which is a lot better then the new version, but probably also more injurious to one’s health. This kit has the serial number PK-1 so it was probably the first kit that Marchbox released and came, as was one of the kit’s selling points, in two different colours of plastic. Revell re-released this kit in about 2010. I see that AZmodel have also released a kit of the Fury but if it is anything like their Hawker Demon kit it might be easier to buy and upgrade the Revell version because I ended up tossing my AZmodel Demon kit in the bin and getting the old Airfix kit with some upgrade parts instead.
Another Matchbox model I made in 1976 was this Hawker Tempest V. The kit came with optional parts to make either the Mark II or the Mark V and some years later I acquired another of these kits to make the radial engined Tempest II. Frog, Heller and Academy have all offered kits of the Tempest V (with reboxings by other brands) and they may well be an improvement on the Matchbox kit, but this was the first kit of this aeroplane to be released.
