Wings900 - Herpa Lufthansa Boeing B 747-430 1:200

Wings900 Model Review Reviewer: Michael Warfel Model Photographs � Todd McCartney Real Aircraft Photo Courtesy of JetPhotos.net
*Airline*	*Make/Model*	*Manufacturer*	*Scale*
	Boeing B 747-430		1:200

Introduction

This year almost everything centered on one thing: King Soccer was ruling the world � and Germany the host of the Soccer World Cup was in everyone�s focus. To get its visitors in the right mood, Lufthansa came up with something very special. Based on the motto � "the ball is round and needs to be kicked into the goal" � several Lufthansa planes will be equipped with the round toy. The nose of the airplanes is painted in the classic black and white soccer pattern. From March 2006 on the model D-ABVL, Boeing 747-700 "M�nchen" 1/200 has been sold via the Lufthansa WorldShop (www.lh-worldshop.com). Lufthansa now provides us with a partial amount of these models for free sale.

The Model

Well once again Lufthansa introduces a special occassion model and now it is presented to us after the 1:500 scale in the 1:200 scale. The model is presented on the non-premimum 1:200 747-400 mould which overall is well done but could use a bit of improvement. The nose of the model could be slightly reworked as the nose below the cockpit windows slopes down and then out too much which gives the nose an odd shape especially from these side angles.

Here you get a better idea of the area below the cockpit windows that needs to be reworked on this mould. The soccer ball on the tip of the nose also has a bit of an odd shape which refelcts the issues with the nose of this mould. As you can see Herpa has introduced quite a bit of door detail on these non-premimum models. The window line is in the proper height, but the upper deck door needs to be longer in length as it should be longer then the doors on the main deck.

The wings are correctly painted with the white top side and the grey lowerside with the silver leading edge. The wing body fairing on this model is done decent enough in my opinion considering the price of the model to its metal competition. The engines overall have the correct GE shape however I find it dissapointing that 1:500 and 1:400 models have two tone exhaust yet this model does not. As you can see there are as much details on this larger 1:200 model as there is on the smaller 1:400 models.

The stabalizers are well moulded of the plastic nature. The tail is painted in the dark blue which prevents any light going through unlike the smaller models. The crane logo is well placed and is of the correct angle. I believe on these larger scale model additional details on the fuselage that include rain guards on the fuselage and additional detailing around the horizontal stabalizer could be printed to make the fuselage more interesting as smaller models already have these features from other manufactures.

The Lufthansa isn't too terribly complicated to replicate and Herpa has correctly placed the Lufthansa logo on the fuselage. The grey underbelly comes up to the correct height on the aircraft and the cargo doors are correctly placed with a sufficent amount of detail for this scale. The gears are well moulded however it would be nice if Herpa would simply put the rubber gears on these models instead of having a "kit" to be able to replace them if you wish. The nose gear doors have the tail number brinted on them which is standard for Herpa model in this scale.

Final Thoughts

This mould is definately showing its age, personally I think it is time that Herpa updates this mould as it has been around for quite a few years and has not seen any updates to it in all those years. The livery is well presented and for all those Lufthasna fleet builders I could recommend this model, but the mould has a few flaws and there are also a few errors such as the upper deck door not being of the correct size.

Rating

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