I own 1,526 models made by Aeroclassics, which probably puts me in the top 10 customers for the brand globally. Certainly, I am obviously a massive fan of their models, if not their owner. He harps on about a lack of innovation in the scale, which is nonsensical, but where is the innovation from Aeroclassics? Well they've recently made a couple of A320s with the double-bogey, fitted only to some of the Indian Airlines 320s. That is innovative, but are they any good? Indian Airlines received 31 double-bogeyed A320s between 1989 and 1994 in response to infrastructure issues at Indian airports at the time. With the double maingear the loading footprint of the aircraft is decreased and taxiways with a lower loading classification can handle the aircraft that might not have been able to otherwise. Looks-wise the undercarriage looks pretty much the same as on a standard A320 in terms of the gear doors. However clearly there are extra wheels, albeit close together. Below is the Aeroclassics effort: Sadly, these look very little like the double bogey of the actual aircraft. In fact, nothing about them is correct. The wheels are too large, there are no gear doors and the tyres are spaced too far apart: I have heard the suggestion that these gear are borrowed from another mould and since the join points don't even match the spaces on the wing for them that makes sense. However, I can't see what other mould they can come from as they don't match the gear from the DC-8, Britannia, A310 or A300.
Aeroclassics already has the standard A320 gear doors. The least they could do is stick the usual gear doors on these new gear legs. I don't understand why they haven't. I'm not sure how I feel about these. It's nice to have a double-bogey A320, but clearly these are inaccurate and lazy representations. In an age when other brands can get tiny details correct why can't Aeroclassics do better? Comments are closed.
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I'm Richard Stretton, an aviation enthusiast and major collector of 400 scale model aircraft. This blog discusses ongoing events in the world of 400 scale. This site is free. Please donate to keep it going.
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