Model Review - Olympic A300 by Aeroclassics

[YesterAirlines]

Some models provide an emotional connection and although I never flew on Olympic their A300s remind me of days as a child at the LHR viewing terrace. Aeroclassics had a strong December set, including quite a few A300s, no doubt in part due to the upcoming YU mould, and I was happy to add this one to my fleet, although I would prefer AC tried a little harder when it comes to QC.

Olympic Airways | Airbus A300B4-203 | SX-BEE | Aeroclassics

When I was a child, about twice a year my dad would drive me up to Heathrow and I'd get to spend some time on the hallowed space of the T2 viewing area. These are some of my happiest memories. One of the regular visitors to T2 at the time were Olympic A30

www.yesterdaysairlines.com

 

[LeoMuse747]

AC A300 is indeed very nice, and I specially like the shape of the CF6-50 engines. However, the wavey wings do look strange on a head-on view of the model a decent model indeed, but still suffering some of the well known Aeroclassics issues

 

[Lightsnack87]

Unfortunately I've also experienced the 'wavy-wings' effect on several recent ACs. Most recently, the United Airlines 727-200 (Battleship Gray) from the November 2024 set.

That issue aside, you can't really go wrong with any of the Olympic liveries. Nice review as always.

 

[YYZ727]

I got the wavy wings on my Air Niugini & on last years Eastern A300's... such a shame, it ruins otherwise lovely models...

 

[Barison82]

A nice background reminisce there of your childhood memories of the dear old LHR T2 terrace Richard, which is sorely missed. They were formative years for me as well, although I caught it much later on in the mid 1990s, but glad I was part of it before it all disappeared forever. Spotted the Olympic A300s there many times as well, when in the final schemes

This was a key release for me also, it fills a major gap in my collection. The 1st version is very hard to find, let alone at an acceptable price! As with any historic release of Olympic old c/s. Still need the AC 707 and I jumped on that 742 release last year as again the 2007 SX-OAA is also ridiculously impossible to acquire

Having the earlier AC A300 release with the unpainted nacelles would make that one more accurate for my period criteria (which is actually set before my time, unusual I know). I am toying with the idea of switching out the engines on this latest copy as I have a spare set of silver CF6-50s, but I’ll see.

Regarding the issues with warping, here is the link I previously posted in the discussion on DAC which sheds more light on what could be causing this problem (for those who might be remotely interested):

Cooling Solutions for Die Casting

Of my purchase of the latest run of AC A300s, 3 out of 5 were severely affected, with 2 of those having the warping/sagging on both wings. I braved a technique using needle-nose pliers wrapped in cloth and managed to carefully bend them up into the correct position, but this really is not a job for the feint-hearted, and it could easily go south

I’ve also had the odd AC DC-9 with a bendy wing, and a couple of 707s, one of which was an old release from 2009. These however were very easy to correct and I got them back into shape by hand. I also have the odd AC DC-10 with minor warping, again these are old releases. As they have slotted wings, I wouldn’t want to mess with those.

Historically out of my 500+ collection this issue appears to have been few and far between (no doubt all due to a greater degree of scrutiny at QC level), however the recent run of A300s in particular seem to have been significantly affected by this problem. Incidentally, all of the earlier AC A300s in my collection from 2007-2014 are fine, and have always been a solid tooling up until this point.

 

[josecolme]

I haven't had any wavy wing issues fortunately. But I did have my first AC quality issue with the Viasa A300. The tail seems to have been sanded way too much and ended up curved on the top where it should be flat. Looks like a 787 tail.

 

[planes_on_a_shelf]

I haven't had any wavy wing issues fortunately. But I did have my first AC quality issue with the Viasa A300. The tail seems to have been sanded way too much and ended up curved on the top where it should be flat. Looks like a 787 tail.

This is outrageous.

 

[OscarBravo992]

I’m a big fan of the AC A300 mould. I only own one example, the Qantas model from the VH-TAA set. It’s not flawless, and definitely not up to modern standards, but for me it captures the charm of the A300 perfectly. Sadly Aeroclassics has been failing in the QC department a lot in the past few years, and I fear the glory days of the brand are long gone.