Xīn lóng International Airport - A Start On The Piers

What to use to make the airport buildings has always been a challenge complicated by the fact that in New Zealand I have never been able to find the Evergreen Plastics I see my American and British friends using to make their terminals beautifully detailed. Typically in its place I have utilised wood offcuts, balsa, card and plastic containers.

For Xin Long the piers are to be primarily made up of some packaging I came across. The plastic tubes are actually containers from work that housed some earphones my company was giving to its employees. They have a nice shape that is reminiscent of the rounded shape of modern terminals (I'm thinking especially of Dubai here). I grabbed a few unwanted packages from workmates so I have four to use for the two pier bodies. Below are the photos of my attempts to build them up and make them into a unified body. There were 5 steps initially:

• Step 1: Use masking tape to connect two packages together
• Step 2: Cut out two pieces of card which will form the pier base
• Step 3: Masking tape the card together
• Step 4: Attached the card to the base of the pier
• Step 5: Use masking tape to mould the base onto the piers

Putting the card base onto the bottom makes the piers more stable but also adds the necessary height when using alongside widebodies as the below photos show:

The next step with the piers is to start painting and obviously there is plenty of detailing still to do with the aprons themselves. I am pretty pleased with progress myself though - here's how the field looks at present: