Airbus A-321 - Wizzair - Zvezda
WizzAir

Scale:: 1:144
Status:: On hold
Started:: May 6, 2019

On a suggestion from my daughter, I am building an Airbus A-321 in the striking white/magenta/ultramarine WizzAir livery. Not the most subtle color scheme for sure, but it is certainly a difference from my usual toned-down military objects and a lot of new challenges for me. The kit's decals are for the demonstrator version of the A321, which I personally find a bit dull.

The model kit is superbly designed and can be built with either flaps fully extended or with wings cleaned up. If you want to use the extended flaps, you will need to be very careful as it requires precision fitting, and it is easy to mess up! Just so you know!

Also the landing gears come in two variants, either with weighted oleos (for an aircraft standing on the ground), or fully extended, such as when the aircraft is still in the air (you will need to use the provided stand for is variant). Quite a nice touch!

Both main engine types that are used by Airbus are provided, so make sure to use the correct one depending on which airliner you intend to depict!

The characteristic sharklets (winglets) on the production mode Airbus are unfortunately not provided, so I purchased resin winglets. This is originally intended for the Revell kit, but fits just perfectly for the Zvezda as well. You will need to cut off the wing tips of the model, but this is a no-brainer conversion.

Something worth mentioning is that the transparencies (windows) are molded in some sort of flexible plastic that is much harder than the gray styrene, so instead of sanding the transparencies in shape, you will need to build up the surrounding plastic with molten styrene instead to make the windscreen part to sit perfectly flush with the fuselage.

For the paint for the Wizzair aircraft, I will need to resort to using automotive paint from a rattle can, as I couldn't find any model paint with the right color. This means that I need to "decant" the paint from the spray cans to be used in the airbrush, but I think I managed to figure it out.