Airliner enthusiasts, prepare to be wowed! With excellent tooling and detail, Zvezda’s A320 includes: a flight deck interior and cabin entrance area at door 1L; optional extended or retracted flaps and slats; one set of landing gear struts for displaying the aircraft on its gear, and a second set with unloaded (extended) oleos for posing the aircraft in flight; closed gear doors for displaying the model in clean configuration; and a stand if you choose an in-flight option.
Two sets of engines are included: CFMs for this Aeroflot aircraft, and an IAE V2500 set that strongly suggests future issues of the kit. The busy, detailed instructions have main steps in numbered boxes, but also sidebars and substeps for other assemblies along the way. The wing assembly is a little confusing in the instructions, with Step 2 being partially repeated in Step 6. What look like four skinny slats (parts B22, B23, B24, and B25) are actually the wing leading edges; they must be installed first if you want to pose the slats extended.
Surface detail is beautifully engraved but inconsistent in spots — the flaps have detail only on their upper surfaces, there are certain engraved details on only three of the four engine cowling halves, and the horizontal stabilizer mounting area on the right fuselage half doesn’t have the detail of its mate on the left half. All are minor problems, easily fixed.
Sprue gates for the fuselage are mainly located on the belly, minimizing possible problems with the more visible upper fuselage seam. Cabin windows are supplied in four clear strips to be glued to the inside of the fuselage halves prior to joining them, and the clear part for the flight deck is a drop-on part comprising the upper fuselage structure as well as the cockpit windows. I elected to omit the cabin windows, filling the openings with clear glue after the model was finished. After fairing in the flight deck clear part, I found the plastic wouldn’t polish out like other kits’ styrene. So, I ended up with cloudy cockpit windows. Brushing them with Pledge FloorCare Multi-Surface Finish helped.
The parts fit precisely and the build went smoothly. There’s little to say, except that I’d recommend building up the extended flaps and underwing canoe fairings at the same time to ensure their symmetry.
I disagreed with the instructions specifying white for sections of the flying surfaces; photos on the Internet show they are light gray instead.
The decals are terrific! They provide for three different Aeroflot aircraft, all with Bermuda registration codes. The conspicuity outlines for doors 1L and 1R are given as silver but should be blue; I replaced mine with blue decal scraps.
Great kit! Zvezda set the bar high with this one. I spent 20 hours completing mine. A note on the box says “Ultimate Kit.” I’m not sure about that, but I’ll look forward to seeing how they top it.
Note: A version of this review appears in the December 2014 FineScale Modeler.