Xīn lóng International Airport - Ground Breaking!

7/7/2015

I already have two model airport dioramas, both of which highlight airports from near the dawn of the jet-age. In recent times I've started collecting modern Chinese aircraft, plus I also have a wide range of US jets from the 1980s-2000, which aren't suitable for Dowse National or Wright Field. So its time for diorama number 3 - to be called Xīn lóng (New Dragon) International. Work started on site in Early June. This blog will be used to highlight construction progress on the new airport.

Space restrictions are the same as for my other airports and this model needs to be collapsible too so its size is restricted to 60cm x 120cm (2ft x 4ft). That means no runways again. I have found some rather nice plastic packaging which have a lovely curved shape and I plan on lining these up to form two piers attached to a central terminal.

My initial planning used just my table top to see roughly how many gates might be feasible for the new layout. Below you can see the plastic piers and also a possible central terminal in the form of an ex-cracker packet which has some nice detailing on it:

You can see I am aiming for about 12-14 gates with at least four for large widebodies. At this point I hadn't decided what the foil material would be. I have used both paper (Dowse National) and paint on wood (Wright Field) before. The former can produce nice results but is very finicky, plus you have to conceal paper joints, get it stuck down properly and can't easily modify things. So paint on wood I decided it would be. Incidentally the foil you see here is rather good - but I couldn't find the original file for it!

A few days after the initial planning I acquired the MDF board for the model and translated the layout onto it. There was space to alter one of the widebody gates to fit an A380. In the absence of the A380 it can instead fit a pair of 757s. I was keen to have some taxiway space so the left pier is shorter than the right. After this shot was taken the top right gate was also modified to fit an A380. With the gates roughly laid out the next step was to begin looking into painting the taxiways and aprons.