[BigGiraffe]

Hello,

It's nice that Geli models are being printed again and available to us for purchase. This time I am making their Sud Aviation "Caravelle" which is done in Austrian Airlines colors.

As with their other kits, this one is actually painted on the card stock and the finish is glossy and smooth, even metallic where it needs to be. The kit also includes the cardboard parts already printed on cardboard, and enough clear plastic to open all of the fuselage windows.

The instructions are printed in German. I can follow along with much of it just by noting the part numbers, but some portions need to be translated to English for good understanding. I recently started doing translations by taking a digital photo of the instruction text, then running the photo through an online OCR site, and then running those results through an online translator. It is faster than my old method of typing the sentences, finding the special German characters online and pasting them into my sentences, and then running that through the translator.

Section 6 is the starting point for the kit. This is a large cylinder with typical attachment tabs and frame at each end. My photo only shows the cylinder but I added the tabs and frames after that.

I worked forward from there, Sections 5 and 4 being typical conical cylinder sections, this time tabs and frame only on the forward end. The photo shows them joined but they are not glued. I like to get all of my cylinders assembled and fitted to each other before actually gluing them together so I can make sure the fit is good... make sure I did not build some kind of warp into the sections. Besides, when I start test-fitting the rear sections, it will be easier not to have the nose sections up there. The parts will be stored as shown in this photo because they adjust to each other and will slip together easily when the time comes to glue them together.

Though Geli included enough plastic to cut out all of the cabin windows, I chose not to do that since there is no interior. And I didn't feel up to making an interior because I've done the interior on a plastic airliner kit (another Caravelle, in fact!) and it's a bit more repetitive than I care to deal with (Even this "small" airliner will need about 80 passenger seats).

Sections 2 and 3 include the flightdeck windshield panels. The instructions tell you to assemble Section 3 without its frame and then attach Section 2 (last photo, #2510). Next the windshield openings are cut out, then add clear plastic to the inside for the "glass", and then add the interior flightdeck parts.

Take care,
Kurt