Show Your Latest 1:400 Purchase

[SIGWX]

Got this from a Hong Kong-based seller a month ago, right before their postal service stopped shipping to the states. Having missed the exchange window the first time, I ain't about to let it slip away again!

The "Wonderful Indonesia" sticker subtly and gracefully complements Garuda's already sleek livery.

 

[BaguetteCollector]

Two new jumbos for my collection, they looks so gorgeous.

 

[Mikeymag]

GJ Pan Am 737-200, the first flight of this aircraft was on July 23, which happens to be my birthday.

 

[Purpleplane]

Nice one.

 

[EnterpriseH]

JetHut Hainan Airlines 737-400 B-2967, a reuse of their JAL Magazine 737-400 mould. I considered this as a cheap replacement of the poor Gemini Jet/JC Wings 737-400 mould, despite the nose looks a bit too round to me, and the lack of tail skid and APU nozzle details.




A comparison with my Panda 737-800. TBH, the JetHut did looks good, but the Panda just looked like an exact scaled down replica of the actual plane.




And the Panda's not a lot more expensive actually. I got my example at only ￥169 as a bargain price, and the JetHut cost me ￥131. Honestly, it seems like it's slowly losing its huge advantages in pricing. I could rather try to find some JC Wings that sell on special if they continued to sold at the price.

Fun fact: they actually didn't fixed the original mould problem that have a long nose gear and make the model a bit of tail sitter, but after several landing gear detachment and repairs (the gears aren't glued very firmed) it seems like my model now have a perfect nose-down attitude. Richard will be happy to see this!

 

[SIGWX]

Air Tahiti Nui has one of the best liveries in the skies right now, and I happened to see one of their 787s last year - their first one, in fact - F-OMUA.

Like her sisterships and the A340 in the past, she was named after one of French Polynesia's numerous islands and atolls. Being the first of four 787s delivered to the airline, her namesake is the atoll of Fakarava, which is fittingly one of the largest in its atoll group and features the widest pass in French Polynesia; further, her tail number is also meaningful, as MUA means "forward" in Tahitian (cognate of Hawaiian "imua" - think of Southwest's Imua One), which the four 787s certainly represented a big step forward for the airline.

Great to see that NG has recreated this complex and stunning scheme quite faithfully.

 

[EnterpriseH]

Dragon Wing Aerolineas Argentinas 747-200 LV-OOZ in 2007, second-handed from friends on the forum.

Easily one of my best 747 collections. So beautiful. Great job Dragon. Who needs Phoenix?

 

[Phantom]

DW's 747 mould, updated to todays standards (gears, wings) would easily blow all of todays offerings out of the water.
HX etc. seem to have success in camouflaging their weak 747 moulds with lots of detail and gimmicks.

 

[EnterpriseH]

DW's 747 mould, updated to todays standards (gears, wings) would easily blow all of todays offerings out of the water.
HX etc. seem to have success in camouflaging their weak 747 moulds with lots of detail and gimmicks.

I personally think HX's 747 mould is also one of the best available now, to me the only problem, besides the well-known way too long landing gear (I highly doubt they are based on the length that the landing gears fully extended in the air), is the angle of the windshield (it always seems a bit too slippy).

Besides, NG's 747 mould, assuming they can fixing the "flat" nose cone, will also be a great mould.
These two moulds have one common, that is they both represented the cross section of the real aircraft correctly. Most of current moulds may have decent side silhouette, but the cross section is not that good, even a completely disaster - especially the Bigbird, which the cross section is an unbearable oval:

That is miles away from the real aircraft, which is an egg shape with elegant curvatures changed at the roof, slightly looked like 8-shaped:


Both HX and NG managed to sort of recreated this cross section shape:



IMO NG did it better, catched the flaten line on the roof very well.

DW's mould also have sort of the cross section, but lack of the flaten line on the roof, still can be improving:



Besides, JC Wings also made this on their 747-400 mould, but I don't have one here.

Honestly, I think this problem on the 747 also represented a widely existing problem in all die casting models. ppl usually only cares the side profile, which could be the most important since it's also the most used angle in plane spotting, and typically just ignored if the cross section and the top view silhouette are accure or not. However, to me, you can only said a mould is "accure" when it's accure in all 3 dimensions.

Taking examples from my JetHut 737-400 and Panda 737-800 again. Here we can see the Panda catched the sharp profile of 737's nose cone even in top view, and the JetHut, despite did it well in side profile, have it unnecessary rounded from top. This is not uncommon in many moulds.

 

[Danio1988]

Space Shuttle theme today:

YY Wings CCCP-82060 Antonov 225 with the Buran Shuttle:


Patriot Models N905NA 747-100 with Endeavour onboard:

 

[planes_on_a_shelf]

IMO NG did it better, catched the flaten line on the roof very well

This is the new regular mould, or the NG Lite?

 

[BaguetteCollector]

This is the new regular mould, or the NG Lite?

looks like the SP one with the CAAC livery

 

[LeoMuse747]

Dragon Wing Aerolineas Argentinas 747-200 LV-OOZ in 2007, second-handed from friends on the forum.

Easily one of my best 747 collections. So beautiful. Great job Dragon. Who needs Phoenix?

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Wonderful model in a very beautiful livery. Much better than the Phoenix 747 release... miles better!

 

[Phantom]

I personally think HX's 747 mould is also one of the best available now

I cannot even disagree here but only thanks to others failing to deliver better - NG showed what's possible with other types but they so terribly fail with anything 747.
IMO the HX 747s today are a bit like BigBirds 747s 20 years ago. The BigBird offered great printing, nice gears and wingtip antennae while the mould (shape) itself wasn't all that great and engines/pylons showed an absolutely crude and outdated engineering (by then standards)
The HX goes along the same lines. The mould (shape) is off in so many areas but the printing/detailing/packaging easily seems to mask these shortcomings. Yes, I'm nitpicky, but NG and Panda spoilt me with stuff like TriStars or Tu-134.
Generally I'm absolutely not a fan of recent tendencies to go for gimmicks instead of accuracy. Things like having a classic JT9D modeled with seperate intake/inlet pieces and see through fans or some piece of plastic glued just aft of a 741's uppderdeck pretending to be a Satcom-aerial. WTF!?

 

[MIAv8Diecast]

I cannot even disagree here but only thanks to others failing to deliver better - NG showed what's possible with other types but they so terribly fail with anything 747.
IMO the HX 747s today are a bit like BigBirds 747s 20 years ago. The BigBird offered great printing, nice gears and wingtip antennae while the mould (shape) itself wasn't all that great and engines/pylons showed an absolutely crude and outdated engineering (by then standards)
The HX goes along the same lines. The mould (shape) is off in so many areas but the printing/detailing/packaging easily seems to mask these shortcomings. Yes, I'm nitpicky, but NG and Panda spoilt me with stuff like TriStars or Tu-134.
Generally I'm absolutely not a fan of recent tendencies to go for gimmicks instead of accuracy. Things like having a classic JT9D modeled with seperate intake/inlet pieces and see through fans or some piece of plastic glued just aft of a 741's uppderdeck pretending to be a Satcom-aerial. WTF!?

Would you agree the NG SP is top of line though? I can't find any better anywhere else which is shocking considering they developed that back when they were under the cover of secrecy when NG wasn't super relevant but struggle to pump out a good 747-100, 400. What are your biggest issues with the HX 747-400 thus far?

 

[Phantom]

Would you agree the NG SP is top of line though? I can't find any better anywhere else which is shocking considering they developed that back when they were under the cover of secrecy when NG wasn't super relevant but struggle to pump out a good 747-100, 400. What are your biggest issues with the HX 747-400 thus far?

Let's say it's the best SP out there so far. What kept me from buying more is the nose. The oversized JT9Ds on erroneousely shaped pylons didn't help. Their 748 certainly isn't bad, it's just the cockpit section that is off.
I didn't take a closer look at HX's 744 and only bought one HX 741 for inspection as the 747Classics are way more important to me. But I see that they share the same erroneous v.tail - something my eyes just can't tolerate. The rest of the 744s doesn't appear too bad and generally a better than the 747Classic. Now if they work on those gears...

 

[pommy80]

New arrival.

 

[LeoMuse747]

JetHut Hainan Airlines 737-400 B-2967, a reuse of their JAL Magazine 737-400 mould. I considered this as a cheap replacement of the poor Gemini Jet/JC Wings 737-400 mould, despite the nose looks a bit too round to me, and the lack of tail skid and APU nozzle details.

View attachment 44880
View attachment 44881

A comparison with my Panda 737-800. TBH, the JetHut did looks good, but the Panda just looked like an exact scaled down replica of the actual plane.

View attachment 44883
View attachment 44891

And the Panda's not a lot more expensive actually. I got my example at only ￥169 as a bargain price, and the JetHut cost me ￥131. Honestly, it seems like it's slowly losing its huge advantages in pricing. I could rather try to find some JC Wings that sell on special if they continued to sold at the price.

Fun fact: they actually didn't fixed the original mould problem that have a long nose gear and make the model a bit of tail sitter, but after several landing gear detachment and repairs (the gears aren't glued very firmed) it seems like my model now have a perfect nose-down attitude. Richard will be happy to see this!

View attachment 44879

The mould is decent, despite not being up to today's standards. Slot-in wings would be much better... at least the cockpit printing is much better here when compared to the original JAL releases. This model looks a lot like 2000s Gemini models

 

[Phantom]

The mould is decent, despite not being up to today's standards. Slot-in wings would be much better... at least the cockpit printing is much better here when compared to the original JAL releases. This model looks a lot like 2000s Gemini models

My eyes like this JetHut better than the Panda 734.

What's the story behind this mould? The v.tail geometry on this is as off as on the Panda. This can't be coincidence?

I could need a few 2nd Gen 737s if only there would be halfways decent moulds.

 

[YesterAirlines]

JetHut Hainan Airlines 737-400 B-2967, a reuse of their JAL Magazine 737-400 mould. I considered this as a cheap replacement of the poor Gemini Jet/JC Wings 737-400 mould, despite the nose looks a bit too round to me, and the lack of tail skid and APU nozzle details.

View attachment 44880
View attachment 44881

A comparison with my Panda 737-800. TBH, the JetHut did looks good, but the Panda just looked like an exact scaled down replica of the actual plane.

View attachment 44883
View attachment 44891

And the Panda's not a lot more expensive actually. I got my example at only ￥169 as a bargain price, and the JetHut cost me ￥131. Honestly, it seems like it's slowly losing its huge advantages in pricing. I could rather try to find some JC Wings that sell on special if they continued to sold at the price.

Fun fact: they actually didn't fixed the original mould problem that have a long nose gear and make the model a bit of tail sitter, but after several landing gear detachment and repairs (the gears aren't glued very firmed) it seems like my model now have a perfect nose-down attitude. Richard will be happy to see this!

View attachment 44879

Thanks for that @EnterpriseH . I hadn't seen this and will try and get it too. Looks ok for the price