Airbus A400M Atlas Luftwaffe

1
January 2, 2025
Cockpit is glued together.
2
January 2, 2025
For the inflight version there must be pilots in the cockpit. But the Revell kit does not provide pilots. So I checked my spare part box and found 2 in nearly 1:72 scale. Please don't take it too seriously, sometimes it just has to be a bit funny. 😄
3
January 3, 2025
A lot of putty and sanding is needed. I guess you can not glue any visible part that fits perfectly. I am really disappointed.
4
January 3, 2025
And as if it's not enough to fill the seam lines, there are also terrible sink marks to fill. Frustrating.
5
January 3, 2025
Making the deflector doors by scratch as there is none coming with the kit.
6
January 3, 2025
Still have to fill the holes of the deflector door. When it's "closed" the air holes are filled.
7
January 3, 2025
Took a sprue part to stabilize the fuselage.
8
January 3, 2025
Made the APU exhaust from a Red Bull can.
9
January 3, 2025
The plastic APU exhaust from the kit was too thick. Here a comparison with the sratch built RedBull can version. Looks way better I think.
10
January 4, 2025
Filled the holes of the deflector door. There is a thin edge on the holes now so later you can see the round structure.
11
January 5, 2025
What a monster! I think it's a good decision to hang the airplane from the ceiling. There's simply no room anywhere else. 😄
12
January 5, 2025
You have to putty everywhere.
13
January 5, 2025
Making some rivets, but only in some places where I can find pictures to make sure they are really visible.
14
January 6, 2025
I sanded the inside of the engine exhausts to make the material thinner. The plastic is molded too thick for my liking. Here is a comparison.
15
January 9, 2025
Working on the engines. It really takes a lot of time to clean all the parts from flesh and supports.
16
January 10, 2025
The engines are ready and prepared for final assembly. I have glued in an additional strut from above on the inside for stabilization.
17
January 10, 2025
Riveting the engines housing
18
January 10, 2025
So, all the big parts glued together. From now on, every work step will be awkward.
19
January 13, 2025
And again: putty is needed everywhere.
20
January 13, 2025
Hope I will not have to sand this area too much, would be a great loss of details.
21
January 13, 2025
The struts on the armor plates in the area of the propellers are much too thick as depicted by Revell. They need to be sanded down a bit.
22
January 13, 2025
I can't believe it: the tank nozzle is almost the first part that fits perfectly, without filler! Wow.
23
January 13, 2025
And then it happened: the tank nozzle broke because I was careless for a moment. So I drilled out both sides, stabilized them with a brass tube and glued them together.
24
January 13, 2025
Preparing for paint job.
25
January 13, 2025
I had to add 3 struts. One was sanded down and the two others do not appear on the Revell kit.
26
January 14, 2025
Paint job startet with black mottling.
27
January 14, 2025
I used a stencil for the dark spots.
28
January 14, 2025
Pre-shading some panel lines
29
January 15, 2025
Started painting the grey color.
30
January 15, 2025
It's crazy how much color is needed for that fat lady

Kommentare

39 2 January, 10:23

Finn
Following. best of luck

1 2 January, 21:17

Chris T. An
Welcome Finn. Well, "luck" is not necessarily what you need with this kit, but thanks anyway. 😛 It is probably more patience. But as a model builder, you have to have that at best anyway.

3 January, 10:06

Ekki
Watching too.

1 3 January, 16:33

Nicolas
Following too.

1 3 January, 17:17

Cuajete
Me 4!

1 3 January, 18:45

DerMattes
Den Brocken schau ich mir an 😉 Following 👍

1 4 January, 13:35

Kenneth
Muss ich auch folgen 👍 Following too 👍

1 4 January, 13:39

Shar Dipree
Following.

1 4 January, 23:01

S M
Funny pilots you have found. Following I will 😄

2 4 January, 23:38

S B
Sehr cool! Ich bin dabei. So wie es aussieht, brauchst du starke Nerven und Durchhaltevermögen. Ich wünsche dir beides!!!! Das Modell gefällt mir bisher sehr gut und der Co-Pilot ist jetzt schon ein Held!

1 5 January, 10:58

Guido
Some very interesting (and challenging) progress. Love the additional self fabricated pieces. 👌🏻

1 6 January, 15:24

Daniel H
Checking in. Came for the pilots, staying for the excellent scratch work. 😁

1 10 January, 16:33

DerMattes
At least the pilot knows the way... yeah, sry 😉

2 10 January, 19:01

Guy Rump
Looking great, following. 👍

1 10 January, 19:15

Cuajete
Very nice job so far 👍

1 10 January, 19:21

Fabrice TIMMERMAN
Nice work. It makes me want to start the one I have in my statch.

1 10 January, 19:54

Chris T. An
Thanks to everyone for being there. I have to vent my frustration about this kit now. I'm getting to the point where painting is next and it's hard to get a clean finish on the seams, especially the center seam of the two fuselage halves. I wouldn't have thought that (Revell) could still produce such a mess in the 21st century. The fit is worse than some kits from the sixties. I've already built a few Revell models, but I've never experienced anything so terrible. Even filling, sanding, priming, filling again and sanding doesn't help. Let's see what it looks like when the gray paint is on. In any case, I'm expecting a sobering result. I will therefore play around a bit with mottling so that the surface perhaps doesn't look quite so "monotonous" and conceals the problems. I hope that works.

13 January, 20:27

Thomas Haberl - TH SCALE MODELS
Taking a seat - I agreed on a commission build for this one and unfortunately you are now confirming my thoughts about the fit when I put the fuselage together for the first time. I did not start yet and I´m a bit scared ... anything else besides the horrendous fit I should know?

1 14 January, 14:22

Erik De Smet
Maybe you just got a poor kit, other modelers who built the same do not signal fitting problems, but the U/C seems to be too weak

14 January, 16:14

Robert Podkoński
Looks great already. Keep it up, Chris!

1 14 January, 17:39

Thomas Kolb
Oboy, that mottling looks awesome! The whole model does in fact!

2 14 January, 17:56

Guido
Great progress! 👍🏻

1 14 January, 18:36

Cuajete
Great mottling! 👍

1 14 January, 19:43

Chris T. An
Thanks guys. To your questions:

@Thomas: I think the most important thing to pay attention to is to do all the work on the engine cowlings BEFORE mounting them on the wings. Especially detail painting and masking is difficult to do on the inner casings when they are already assembled. Well, and you can read everywhere that the wheels should be built with metal tubes instead of the thin plastic parts. Fortunately I'm spared that with the inflight version.

@Erik: It may well be that some people get good kits, but a lot of people seem to have the same problems. I've read about it in various forums (community.revell.de/viewtopic.php?t=10172 and britmodeller.com/for..us-a400m-revell-172/) and even in the German trade magazine "ModellFan" (April 2024 issue) the author/modeler mentioned problems. I'm probably just extremely unlucky.

1 15 January, 07:57

Thomas Haberl - TH SCALE MODELS
Thanks Chris! I will take that into account! With paint on it looks really good and worth the effort on the seams 👌

1 15 January, 17:24

Album info

What a huge bird. No way to show it in a display, so it must be the inflight version: no wheels + closed doors = less work. 😉

Airbus A400M Atlas Luftwaffe

30 Bilder

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1:72 Airbus A400M "Atlas" (Revell 03929)

Airbus A400M-180 Atlas

Bundeswehr Luftwaffe (German Air Force 1956-now)
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