Xīn lóng International - Apron Detailing Begins

It's been so busy here at Yesterday's Airlines that I've been remiss in providing updates about ongoing construction of Xin Long's terminal 2. There has been plenty of work going on and in this post we take a look at adding windows and beginning the details of the apron markings. One thing to be really careful of when producing a model airport is that all the gates are arranged sensibly so that the airbridges can reach the aircraft and always do so using the port side of the plane. This can sometimes be tougher than it sounds!

Pier detailing has begun but in this shot the apron detailing hasn't

The first thing I needed to do was redesign the triangular terminal connector as it was not quite right. I wanted it to slant towards the rear but it wasn't so I recut it and put it together again. You can see in the photos below how simple the construction is. It is made of just cut cardboard and paper held together with masking tape.

With the shell complete it was an easy run to add the roof and windows using the usual template files I've got. At the same time I was able to begin also adding windows to the other piers also. Note also that I added in some service roads running along the inside of both the main piers.

Now it was time to return to the paint pens and start working on the apron markings around the gates. As you can see below white hashing is used for possible ground service equipment storage, whilst red outlines the airbridge footings and gate edges.

The next step was to begin to test that the airbridges could be fitted and reach the actual gates. This was especially important for the swing gates where they needed to be able to reach both the single widebody or alternatively the two narrowbodies depending on gate occupancy. In the shot below you can see the gates with all spots filled to test positioning of the airbridges:

Once I knew roughly where the airbridges would go I could add yellow cross-hatching to represent their swing arcs. I used yellow based off photos from Beijing Capital but I have seen that it is more regular for these markings to be red at many airports. Note also I've added more parking spaces and spots for the pushback tugs to sit at:

Once I'd done all this I realised I was missing the opportunity to convert the A380 gate to a swing gate for a pair of narrowbodies. That was quite easy to do although it really tested the length of the airbridge. Note these are just test airbridges and not the final installations. Following this post all the major construction is now complete and it just remains to add windows to the rest of the piers, complete apron markings to all the gates, add airbridges and weather the aprons.