There must be some haggis friendly people in Bonnie China or at least someone with a sense of humour, concerning the original manufacturer of the L-1011 Tristar, for Lockness models is a cunning play on words and the box comes replete with the monster itself. Great stuff. I can confirm that not only will Lockness be making the Tristar 1 but they will also be creating an accurate version of the Tristar 500 too. So, there will be a Tristar bonanza coming in early 2019. NG Models have a Tristar 1, 200 and 500, Gemini Jets has a workable Tristar 1 (and abysmal Tristar 500) and now Lockness has a Tristar 1 and 500 too. Prepare for tri-jet overload. Lockness Models have been in contact with me and I should be getting some of their new Tristars for review very soon. In the meantime, they have provided me with some photos of the new mould, plus I have some of Waffle’s excellent shots as well. The initial releases cover a spread of 4 subjects – two TWA ‘Twin Globes’, Air Canada delivery and Air Lanka. It’s a good mix for starters and I know that there’ll be a wide variety of fan favourite L-1011s on the way with Lockness keeping up a rapid pace, that at least Gemini won’t be able to match. Buy your Lockness Models from the Waffle man at Waffle Collectibles A brief look at the mould, without having yet seen it in person, suggests it is essentially very good. The fuselage, tail and wings are very nice and the engine pylons and engines do not suffer from the issues that the NG Models version has (and they are fixing). On the minus side the nose, although ok, doesn't seem quite as nice as the NG Models version and the landing gear appears a bit short for my tastes. The maingear doors are also too long and not correctly shaped. From the top the mould looks excellent and the gear issues I’ve raised should hopefully be quick fixes. You’ll also notice that Lockness Models, like another manufacturer we know and love, don’t believe in putting ‘oversized and out of scale’ antennae on their models. Printing wise the cockpit windows are not big enough for me, but I’ll reserve judgement until I see the real thing. If indeed they are a bit small then again it should hopefully be an easy fix. I have already fed back my initial findings to Lockness and hopefully they will continue to improve their Tristar moulds as they produce their range of L-1011s. My first impressions are that the Lockness versions are more than worthy of your dollar and at least until we see a finished printed NG Models version they are certainly the best L-1011s around.
7 Comments
Doug Seeley
24/4/2019 07:38:19 am
Rubbish - look a lot like Blue Box Tristars, but not quite as good.
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RStretton
24/4/2019 07:47:09 am
Harsh Doug. I think there is some room for improvement but the shape of the fuselage and tail is much better than the Blue Box
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Adrian
24/4/2019 08:25:48 am
Cockpit windscreen appears to be too small and printed too high. Will wait to see what NG has to offer.
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Ciderman
24/4/2019 04:13:22 pm
The no. 2 engine fairing doesn't seem to be accurately modeled. There should be a kind of straight offset between the fuselage and the engine. At least in Waffle's photos it appears odd.
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tincanflyer
24/4/2019 06:22:00 pm
Aeroclassics strikes again, it seems. Sounds like their play on themes like the A310's they released as "Byrd" models a few years back.
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John
25/4/2019 11:51:32 pm
Looking forward to seeing the Air Canada L1011 model. Hope they’ll be available at my preferred vendor.
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Ian
2/5/2019 08:12:19 pm
These L1011's are a disappointing. Once again the nose section is chronically bad (judging by these pictures). My favourite airframe. I recall Adrian suggesting some years ago that it really isn't rocket science to get this right if blueprints are used when creating the mould. I don't understand what the problem is. As usual, thanks for the revue Richard
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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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