 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 A300s. It is these kind of emotions that help Aeroclassics to feature so regularly in my collecting and an Olympic A300 has been a rarity that has been missing from my fleet for too long. Aeroclassics December releases enabled them to finish 2024 strongly and I was pleased to see an Olympic Airbus feature. Of course the question too often with Aeroclassics is, can the quality live up to the expectation? Let's see. Each review is to split into three key areas:
MOULD  The Aeroclassics Airbus A300 mould has long been a favourite of mine and I own 56 of them nowadays. It has also long been the best A300 in 400 scale, but there is competition coming and no doubt that the recent run of Aeroclassics A300s is partly to forestall the upcoming new YU Models version of the aircraft.  Aside from the YU version there have been 6 older A300 moulds (including the JAL Collection De Agostini effort). Only the Aeroclassics mould has received much usage in recent years, but it only had two usages in 2023 and until November 2024 had had none in that year too. November and December saw 8 releases.  The only other active A300 mould is the Phoenix edition, which although a slot in wings mould, suffers from a dreadful nose. The Aeroclassics version doesn't suffer from this at all and has an excellent forward fuselage.  The undercarriage legs of the model are well detailed and a good height, but the tyres are of course the simple Aeroclassics style, without gearhubs. A pair of YU ModeL releases from last year using this Aeroclassics mould did feature updated tyre hubs but they have not been used by AC themselves.  The rest of the fuselage is well shaped and the rear fuselage near perfect. Aeroclassics, as with everyone else, doesn't have a different mould for the fuselage of the A300B4 and the A300-600, but the version that exists is accurate for a B4 such as this one. The one weakness the Aeroclassics mould has is that it is one of the last moulds to be made as a cradle fit. That means there is a seam around the wingroot and under the fuselage. Unfortunately, it is quite an obvious seam, however it has never been a major issue for me.  Overall the Aeroclassics A300 remains a good mould and one of my favourites, however it is showing its age in relation to the wing seam, while the simple tyres and lack of aerials are features of the Aeroclassics brand. It is entirely possible that the all new YU A300, which should be coming soon, will render this mould obsolete but I doubt I will be replacing much of my existing A300 collection given the basic quality of this mould. SCORE - 8 PAINT & LIVERY  The Olympic Airways scheme was always instantly recognisable, but also had a rather old-fashioned look to it that attempted revamps in the early 1990s never really successfully resolved. This aircraft was delivered in April 1980 and served until December 1999. During its career it wore 4 versions of the Olympic scheme.  Originally delivered with metallic engines, by about 1991 the nacelles had been painted grey and from 1994 the black nosecone tip was dropped. From around 1995 the frame wore a eurowhite livery with just titles and the tail logo. It is the second version, with grey engines and the black nosecone that is represented by this model. This photo shows the scheme off well.  The livery reproduction here is very good. The dark blue colour and the individual ring colouring is fine. The cheatline is positioned at a good height (the original release was criticised for a high cheatline) and details such as the E on the tailtop and underwing reg have been remembered.  My only criticism of the livery is that the aircraft name of 'NESTOR' should be in Greek on the port side and English on the starboard, but is in Greek on both sides. SCORE - 9 PRINTING & QUALITY CONTROL  Aeroclassics printing isn't always the most detailed and areas such as the engine nacelles and under-fuselage are a little bare compared to models from other brands. Nonetheless, the printing that is present is decent aside from an overpaint or print line that runs along the fuselage at the top of the grey belly. I've seen similar on other AC A300s before.  From the front the engine nacelles are also rather silvery, but more obvious are issues with the wing. Aeroclassics has been suffering for sometime with unnatutal bends and kinks in the wings of several moulds (mostly DC-9s and A300s). It has been theorised that this has been caused by handling of the castings before they have fully hardened. Accordingly the portside wing of this model illustrates a bend, just outboard of the engine.  Additionally, the starboard wing also has a small quality defect with the rear of the wingtip being bent upwards. Build quality is otherwise solid. SCORE - 6 SUMMARY I am happy I purchased this model as it fills an important gap in my collection. It may be that the new YU A300 means there will be a better version out soon, but I preferred to take the chance of buying this over waiting for the possibility of a YU Olympic A300, no doubt exactly the thinking of Aeroclassics themselves. The model has turned out well, but it is a shame that Aeroclassics persists in replicating issues with earlier models and producing an unchanging product year after year. The tyres and lack of aerials don't matter much to me, but the ongoing wing curve issues (reported first more than a year ago) suggests a rather make-do attitude to their craft. FINAL SCORE - 23/30 
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AuthorI'm Richard Stretton an aviation enthusiast and major collector of 400 scale models. On this page I take a detailed look at new releases. This site is free. Please donate to keep it going.
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