Building up the Meccano Concorde.

**wonwinglo** · 01-01-2006

MECCANO CONCORDE.

The long awaited Meccano Concorde arrived during August 2005 perhaps just a little too late to get the maximum sales potential from this beautiful aircraft that is no longer in service,Concorde enthusiasts will love this sleek rendering in good old Meccano parts with some special items made specially for this delightful version,the layout has been carefully thought out with quite a detailed undercarriage unit in the form of built up bogies,rubber tyres and sturdy axles and legs.
The model assembles from a box of parts neatly packaged and set out in a polystyrene foam building tray,the instructions come in the modern form of non text illustrations displaying the required parts for each assembly stage,the crux of the fuselage revolves around eight cylinders each bolted together to form the long slim form,the die cast nose and tail cones bolt onto further specially formed pressings held in place with lock nuts for the drop snoot nose.
The only area where there was assembly problems was the engine assemblies,the required hole spacing shown on the drawing is wrong and created quite a bit of head scratching to find a solution,by adding an additional strip under the wings and placing a long bolt straight through the wing from top to bottom I solved the issue,the fronts of the engine intakes needed extending with further small one inch strips which were in turn fixed to the brackets,in all cases I had to rob parts from my stock of Meccano.
Why such an error should have crept in I really do not know ? but it is a serious one that needs looking at and rectifying.
The decals complete the attractive look and when the model is at rest it really looks the part.
Here are some angles on this unusual model-

Looking down onto the Meccano Concorde shows the attention to detail,not an easy subject to produce from bolted components.

Impressive sit on the bogie undercarriage modules made up from a few dozen parts.

A better view of the undercarriage,note the cross piece of Meccano strip that had to be added to secure the problem engine nacelles,the hole staggering just does not line up placing the engines too far towards the leading edge of the wing,the plastic jet nozzles were a sloppy fit and needed to be fixed with cyno,otherwise they fall off.

Another view showing extended intake lips.

The sleek frontal lines of Concorde.

Verdict-A clever rendering of Concorde marred by the problem with the engine nacelle fitting problem,but dis-regarding this I really enjoyed building this one.

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