Revell Airbus A380-800

The very first kit of the growing range of airliners from Airbus Industries, the A380-800, is now with us. This kit is big! The white plastic parts are contained within four large frames and all have very nice detailing. The undercarriage assemblies in particular are very well depicted. The largest parts, such as the wings and fuselage halves, have recessed lines that may at first seem slightly over scale but when painted it is not too obvious.Some points that stand out and are worth mentioning are the beautiful curves of the aerofoil sections to all the flying surfaces, the flight deck that has just enough for this scale and the size of the fuselage.

Noticeable on the insides of the fuselage halves, are the reinforcing strips moulded in to give some strength. Alternative parts for the two different engines are included. There is not much difference in the kit parts other than the rear shock cones (that are hard to differentiate) and the engine fronts with domed spinners for the GP2000 and pointed ones for the Rolls Royce Trent 900s. A small clear sprue has the flight deck windscreen and wing leading-edge lights.

Instructions

The 16-page instruction booklet is standard Revell and all 52 stages are quite clear and easy to follow. Wherever painting is required, this is Bagged up and a letter indicates the colour to be used by referring to the colour listing on page 3. The last two pages deal with the main color scheme and decal placement guide.

Construction

Construction begins with the two-part flight deck and is then followed by the assembly of all the undercarriage units, fuselage, wings, engines, etc. I followed the instructions up to a point and then decided that in order to ease masking and painting, I would complete the fuselage as a whole by doing all the necessary paintwork and decaling. The wings were dealt with similarly, as were all four engine units, painted and decaled as sub-assemblies. It is worth noting here that the decals for the pylons need to be applied before parts 141 otherwise the effect will be spoilt. This is not pointed out in the instructions but I feel it should be. The undercarriage units on the fuselage needed to be added as per instructions as it would have proved tricky to fit them on after any painting stage, but it does mean very careful handling is needed to avoid damaging them during the whole construction phase and after. Another thing: I leave the wheels off (all twenty of them!) until after the main assembly, including the units that are attached to the wings.

With a fuselage as large as this one I could see that reinforcing strips would be beneficial to the fuselage joints, using the same principals as one would in vac-form modelling. This I did with strips of thick plastic card. Additionally, it seemed possible the fuselage could suffer further when fitting the wings to the fuselage as the under fuselage panel (part 49) is not added until after the wings thus causing the sides to flex inwards and weaken the fuselage joint. To avoid this I added more strips of plastic card as spreader bars all along between the wing root and landing gear boxes to strengthen this area before adding part 149. This foresight proved worthwhile. Staying with the fuselage, I used Halfords white primer and Appliance White as a finish. As an experiment and as a result of hearing about this next technique somewhere, I polished the Appliance Whlte finish with metallic T-cut because of it being a finer compound than the regular version. This worked very well and eliminated any spraying errors and produced a perfectly smooth fuselage ready for those wonderful decals. Before the decals, however, I opted to fill all the cabin windows with Kristal Klear as it was an easier option than filler and I had already decided to use the 'greyed' - in window decals including the flight deck windscreen. Other than the tiny aerials that were yet to be added the tailplanes were assembled, painted, and decaled prior to fitting them in place. Now, they do fit quite well, but the tab seems a bit smaller than the slot they go into. This made them a bit sloppy when I went to glue them in place with PVA. I chose PVA because the decals that need to be in place before fitting the tailplanes would be marred by liquid cement or similar. However, this medium took longer to dry and was not that successful so they were carefully removed with Jots of water and another approach made. l resorted to very careful use of cyanoacrylate and that worked, thankfully, as I dreaded the thought of spoiling the decals that were already applied.

Overall, the kit goes together very well with the filler remaining untouched throughout. Another point I really liked was the way the engine intake rims are moulded. Being in one piece and plugged into the fronts makes for easier painting and avoids complicated masking. I noted on the box side that the kit is manufactured in Poland and credit is due to the toolmakers for the way this kit has been tackled.

Color Options

As the full-size aircraft at that time has not yet flown, there are no airline options in the colour schemes although there have been some customers announced. The obvious scheme therefore is the Airbus house colours with overall white fuselage and light grey flying surfaces.

As already mentioned I used Halfords aerosols for the white of the fuselage, but for the wings and tail I used their grey primer and tried Xtracolor X359, (Airbus Industries Grey), which has recently been added to the range. I also used Xtracolor Corroguard (X331) for that area of the wings.

Decals

The decal sheet is just one huge sheet! It measures 22S mm by 340 mm. That is about half an inch bigger all round than an A4 sheet of paper. The quality of the printing is outstanding and performance wise they worked very well with decal solvents, especially for the fin and rear fuselage bands with all those compound curves. Optional windscreen and cabin windows are included. These are either the frame outlines only or the 'greyed'-in frames if one prefers to fill the openings as moulded on the kit. All the necessary stencilling is also included and all the door outlines and wing walks too. The decals for the wing walk lines are very fine and they need to be applied with the greatest of care, at the same time, getting them to stay straight is fun, although this is helped by the previously painted areas of Corroguard. It would be foolish to criticise the decals for anything so ... Decal Rating = 10/10.

Just in case you are wondering, the decals are designed for Revell by Daco and printed in Italy.

Accuracy

As the type is yet to fly no pictures exist to compare the model with, only computer images and artist's impressions. As for the dimensions, I trust the model is accurate as all the information is supplied by Airbus Industries and Revell has been licensed to produce the kit, a fact stated on the box side. It looks good regardless.

Conclusion/Recommendation

This is one large model, probably about the size of the Boeing 747 to the same scale. I don't yet have the 747 in my collection to compare the A380 with but it is impressive and looks enormous against the already large A330! I had my moments while building the model but have to say I found it an excellent kit to make, but where to put it is another matter. It is certainly recommended to all modellers and especially airliner fans, but it does need a bit of planning before putting it together and careful handling during construction, as I found out. Who'll be the first with a set of aftermarket decals?