Aviation400 April 2020 Releases

Aviation400 has gained something of a reputation for long lead times with its releases, somewhat in the vain of JC Wings. It was last June that they announced a trio of military A330s seemingly suggesting that they would also be adding the extra elements to the models to make them realistic as tankers. It has been 10 months but the trio have just hit the shops alongside some more standard A350s and a 777. Have AV400 done what they said they would?

Tanker A330s

Here is the link to last June's announcement for the three A330s:

Aviation400 June 2019 Announcements

At the time I wondered whether they would match the new models to the artwork they were showing. It appears that they have indeed followed through.

One is an RAF Voyager KC.3 tanker transport – registered ZZ333. The RAF A330 KC.3s are not fitted with the fuselage Aerial Refuelling Boom System and instead use two Cobham 905E under-wing refueling pods and an 805E fuselage refueling unit (the KC.2 variant just has the underwing pods). ​Take a look at the images below and you can see that the model is fitted with an impressive array of lumps and bumps around the fuselage plus has the underwing pods:

Even more exciting is that the other two A330 tankers (in the colours of the Royal Australian Air Force (as A39-003) and Republic of Singapore Air Force (as 763)) are both fitted with the Aerial Refuelling Boom System and the artwork clearly showed it.

Once again AV400 have come through and both models look super-impressive:

The tail booms hint at the possibility of movement, although it is hard to be sure.

I admit to not being totally sold on AV400's A330, which is the weakest of the available moulds, but these three do look very good.

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Civilians

Also released this month are two more versions of the JAL A350 (silver and green variants) and the 60th Anniversary China Airlines 777-300ER. The splash of colour almost makes the dull JAL livery presentable!