Indonesia Ahoy: Starting A New Collection

Given the number of models I own I really ought not to be starting new areas of the collection, but the post-deregulation period in developing nations has always been of real interest to me and Indonesia in particular is super interesting. In recent years there has been a nice selection of relatively obscure releases made, often in partnership with retailers, and even though I know I shouldn't have recently I started an Indonesian fleet too.

My interest in Indonesia has been long-standing and I was actually published on the topic of the Indonesian airline industry in Airliner World back in August 2015:

Certainly the post-deregulation era allowed for the start-up of a wide variety of, often dubious, airlines and resulted in the inevitable poor safety record. Nonetheless, the comings and goings of the Indonesian marketplace are a fertile ground for an aviation enthusiast so for some time I've been keeping an eye on Indonesian releases.

Garuda obviously is well catered for in 400 scale but I'm more interested in the smaller airlines myself. In the past few years Indonesian retailers like airshop diecast have started a fertile relationship with Panda Models, which has seen the release of 19 models covering a range of airlines. There has also been a pair of JC Wings MD-80s.

Starting in April I began to look around for Indonesian releases I'd missed out on and partly thanks to the Aeroclassics discount sales I was able to acquire several from Waffle and Diecast Airplane. These were mainly Aeroclassics 737s and A320s covering Sriwijaya Air, Citilink, Bouraq Indonesia and Merpati, plus a Sempati F-27. 

Casting my net a little further afield I was able to make contact with airshop diecast, via Facebook, and pick-up a pair of the Panda Citilink 737-300s. Panda had made 5 Garuda and Citilink variants in mid-2018. I'm a big fan of the Panda 737-300 so love these. The Lion Air above is also a Panda model.

I'd already been sent the Lion Air Airbus A330neo by JC Wings for review and was able to acquire the Phoenix Citilink version from Waffle to compare it to. This arrived with some more collection sale Indonesian items plus a brand new Garuda Explore ATR-72 in July:

My next port of call was the Aircraft Model Store in the UK who still had all 3 Indonesian Apollo Models Boeing 747-400s for sale. These are vastly superior to the Phoenix alternatives I wouldn't touch with a bargepole. These are perhaps my happiest purchase yet in the Indo fleet:

Looking to Australia and my friend who runs the eBay store Model Aircraft Australia had several Lion Air 737-900ERs for sale. Although I'm not a massive fan of the Phoenix 737 these ones aren't too bad and have better cockpit printing than many. 

My last addition has been one of the Lion Air Boeing 737-8 MAX releases I was lucky to track down on taobao. I really like the Panda MAX and am of the opinion it is superior to all others in 400 scale:

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As it stands at the moment the above additions gives me a small fleet of 22 Indonesian airliners as follows:

The next additions will be four models incoming from airshop diecast. These are a Tiger Mandala A320, the pair of Bouraq MD-80s and their most recent release - a Batik A320. The one model I really want and haven't been able to source as of yet is the Panda Models Adam Air 737-300. If anyone has one of those they are selling give me a call please. This is the model:

WANTED!

Also difficult to find is the JC-Wings Wings Air ATR-72:

Anyway the plan is to gradually build up the Indonesian fleet and try not to overdo it! Hopefully there'll be some more interesting unusual releases in the future like Batavia Air, Jatayu Air, Air Wagon Int, Expressair, Nam Air, Star Air, Indonesian Airlines, Air Paradise Int, Top Air and others.

I've also re-organised the Asian cabinet so Indonesia now has a whole shelf to itself. This is the layout at the moment: