Airfix 1/144 Hawker Siddeley Trident British Airways

This is an old kit. But its also the only one I know of this airplane...

The Hawker Siddeley Trident history should be known... Because if this plane became a modest airliner, it was because of administration bad decision... British Airways wanted a small plane for short-medium distances... And ask for Hawker Siddeley proposal... At the time, there was cooperation between them and Boeing. The desing was for a 3 engine airplane... As Birtish Airways had long airways, didn't cared if the plane was underpowered, in fact, kind of wanted to, so that it would burn less fuel... And the design was made for 3 small engines... As the design was being made, the engineers realised it could be extended, made bigger, and should be prepared for accomodating slightly larger engines, as it would allow to take of on shorter runways and even increase its size. And administration saied no. Only wanted to do the BA order... Didn't looked into the future... And Hawker Siddeley did the trident... And Boeing took that info and made the 727, simply the most sucessfull airplane of its time... When Hakwer Siddeley administration realiser what was loosing, it was too late... there was no way to improve the design, not even by using a 4th take off only jet engine...

About the kit itself, its not that good... The unique characteristic of the real airplane is that the front landing gear is not centered! That has to be changed on the model... The real one had this offset so that the large electronics could fit in the nose...
On the other hand, the rear landing gear is not that well detailled... ITs a little "bulky"...

Other issue is to fit the front window... which is not easy...The gap needs a lot of sand paper work... Which I should have done!
Another thing is that the rear air entry should be more triangular then circular... which is much harder to correct...

 But despite the defects, the troublesom of the kit, it does look nice in the end... its not a very big one, but still nice to have...

The offset landing gear, and its history, make it a good one to have on the shelf.
 On the rear, we can see the small engines...
As an end remark, do search for its history, because this should be the biggest "could have been" of the airplane industry...



 







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