Irish Aviation in 1/144 scale

by Roy McKay

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  St Patricks Day 2009 

 

These are all 1/144 kits, the Airbus A-320 and the Boeing 737-800 being from Revell and the 737-200 is from Airfix.

The Airbus is marked using Max Decals, and represents the Aircraft we flew out and back in to a romantic weekend in Barcelona a few years ago. Add to that the fact it is named for my partner (her name is Dee, registration is EI-DEE) and I had no choice to build it. The kit went together with no dramas (unusually for me) and the Max Decals were very nice (although being incredibly thin were very fragile.)

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The Ryanair 737-800 represents EI-DCF, our holiday transport last summer to Venice, Italy. It is built totally out of box, including the decals, although to build EI-DCF as she currently appears you must also use the winglets that are marked as not for use on the instructions.  The instructions also suggest gluing the main wheel bay to the lower wing before the wings are joined to the fuselage, but if you do this you can't get the wings attached as the wheelbay fouls the fuselage. It has to go in the fuselage first, with some deft manouvering, and the wings attached after.

The last one is the old Airfix 737-200 marked as one of the older Ryanair flying billboard fleet. The decals came from Jet Decal, and are meant for the 1/200 Hasegawa kit. However, the doors are the right size, as are the registration letters, the Jaguar script is only a little too small (hardly noticeable). The Cat on the forward fuselage is too small, and more noticeable, but I can certainly live with it. It's also interesting to show two rival aircraft makes, in service with two bitterly rival Airlines, both based in one of the worlds smallest countries.

Small world, no? 

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Roy

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Photos and text © by Roy McKay