Aeroclassics & Lockness: June 2019 Releases

Yesterday marked the announcment of the new Aeroclassics and Lockness models and unusually neither came with photos of the actual models. By now though you should now what you are going to get on the whole, although I admit I won't be ordering anything until I see photos.

Last month I ended up acquiring 5 of the announced models made up of 3 Aeroclassics 767s and a pair of the Lockness Tristars. Aeroclassics seems to have worked out what they are doing with the 767s and all three of them were solid models. In fact I have done a detailed review on one of them, which can be found below:

Guiding Koru: Air New Zealand Boeing 767 Review

I admit however that my patience with the Lockness Tristars is running out. Neither was very good and in fact the Tristar 500 was far from it. I really hope that Lockness are taking onboard feedback and looking to improve these moulds.

May's Aeroclassics/Lockness purchases

This month the Aeroclassics branded models make up the minority of the release announcement with only 6 models split between the 767 and the A320 family.

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Diverse 767s

The good selection of 767s from Aeroclassics continues and I have very high hopes for these models all of which have a good chance of being excellent, assuming the factory is paying attention. The Britannia is a must being one of the earliest and most important operators of the short series 200. 

Britannia also leased out its aircraft from time to time and the Aero Peru is an interesting obscurity which uses most of the Britannia livery. AeroPeru certainly seems to be an airline that Aeroclassics likes as this makes the 12th Aeroclassics release featuring the carrier.

The third and last 767 is a freight bird in the bright yellow of DHL. The recent selection of 727s seems to have sold well so I would expect this one will too.

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N Reg Airbus Twins

The A320 family aircraft this month all represent an interesting collection with one NEO and two CEOs or to put it another way one 'classic' and two modern representatives. The pick for me is the Spirit Airlines A321 in the silver version of the digital cubes livery that Spirit wore before it became a low cost airline. It was always an excellent scheme.

I suspect that the American Airlines A321NEO will be more popular than the Spirit, assuming that Aeroclassics get the colours correct, whilst the JetBlue continues the popular special livery series for that airline.

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Lockness L-1011s

The bulk of the announcements this month come from Lockness Models and it appears to be a case of 'making hay while the sun shines' or perhaps more accurately 'making as many L-1011s as possible before NG Models get their Tristars out'. 

I have been giving the Lockness L-1011 a chance but frankly at the moment it isn't comparing well to previous moulds so personally I'm likely to steer clear of most of these. This is a real shame as the airline choices here are great and if the mould was better I'd get all of them.

I'll be discussing the Lockness Tristar in more detail in the coming weeks. There is hope for the mould and it is entirely possible that Lockness have already made adjustments for this release set (certainly the cockpit printing has I understand been modified). I hope they have but only photos of the models will determine that. 

At least most of the releases are standard length Tristars as this mould is significantly better than the Tristar 500. From next month Lockness will have stiff competition from NG Models with their Tristars and I happen to know that NG will be making Hawaiian Tristars in its first release set. They'll make an interesting comparison.

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Summary

This should be the ultimate killer release month for me but unfortunately the Lockness mould issues will make it a relatively cheap one. Unless the pictures show significant changes to both the mould and printing I think this month for me will consist of just 3 models. I eagerly await the photos.