Airfix BAC/Aérospatiale Concorde, British Airways 1:72

Moving onto the visor, the kit doesn’t supply anything underneath it and you would see directly into the nose. Looking at my reference pictures there is a very noticeable and distinctive anti-glare shield.

This is angled in an inverted V-shape and has ribbing across it unequally spaced. Mounting this is easy, as there are 4 holes in the lower visor intended for the droop mechanism. Some styrene rod through these, trimmed and sanded flush create a stable base to mount the shield.

The shield is cut out from plasticard and scored in the centre to create the inverted V, this is then held in place by some strip, which I extended to give a good place to handle while painting. Test-fitting against the windscreen base will give you the correct angles.

The ribs are formed from square rod stock and sanded at the edges and centre to profile.

I’d say this was a fair representation of what can be seen through the visor in the reference pictures.

The fit of the visor is pretty reasonable and only some small amount of filler and careful sanding to profile at the rear is needed.

As masking windows is my least favourite job, I cheated and bought the excellent New Ware mask set.

Undercoating the cockpit windows with NATO Black keeps the internal frames correct.

Underneath the nose joint needs some plasticard strip in the gaps, followed by some filler and sanded flush.

Lastly the side airfoil filets mount in their respective slots and will need a little liquid putty to smooth the joins.

The completed nose section can now mount to the main fuselage, however as with every other major joint on this kit I would recommend some epoxy for additional strength.

That’s construction complete, a lot less harrowing than expected, but now comes the real challenge, priming and painting what is now an almost a 1 metre long fairly substantial lump of plastic.

Painting…