1400 Club Collections has developed some impressive airport accessories and ground service equipment for diecast aircraft aficionados. They currently offer a line of ground service equipment such as tugs, baggage carts, belt loaders as well as cargo loaders and pallets for 1:400 and 1:500 scale collectors. Jet blast deflectors are offered as part of their airport accessories product line. We recently had the opportunity to sit down with 1400 Club Collections founder Malik Simon for a brief interview.
DF=The Diecast Flier
MS=Malik Simon
DF= When did you develop an interest in aviation?
MS=I grew up just outside of Orlando Sanford international Airport and began to develop an interest in aviation around the age of five years old.
DF=What inspired you to design Ground Service Equipment? When did you begin to design them?
MS=GSE is one of those bitter sweet relationships in the model community. The good sets are hard to find and the readily available sets are not realistic and have an outdated design. It made sense to consider creating my own. I eventually ran into a 3D print designer who motivated me to produce GSE via 3D plastic molds. We began creating designs and testing them in the summer of 2016 and launched in January 2017.
DF=What type of products do you offer?
MS=We’re currently focused on creating plane side equipment and cargo terminal heavy equipment. All of our molds are made with a modern day designs to match what you would see in real life at an airport.
DF: What scales are your products offered in?
1:500 and 1:400 scale.
DF=Do you offer custom designed ground service equipment?
MS=Not yet, but we eventually want to reach this stage.
DF=On average from start to finish how long does it take to design a Ground Service Equipment?
MS=The Airport Accessories Set design took our 3D print designer months to perfect the design and then another 3 weeks to paint and cure the artwork.
DF=What is the biggest challenge when it comes to designing and constructing Ground Service Equipment?
MS=Painting. This may very well be due to my sense of perfection, but a lot of folks underestimate the challenges that accompany painting. Seeing the real-life equipment and then proceeding to paint it to resemble what you have seen is a challenge in itself.
DF=Any future plans to expand your product line?
MS=Lots of plans, too many plans. We’re very excited to see where this journey will take us.
Looks very nice. When will they be available for sale? Prices? I would also like to see them in 1/200. What say you?
Checkout the link to the 1400 Club ebay page located at the end of the article. They are slowly being released.
I hope they release airstairs and cargo pallet lifts and cater trucks that would actually works with A380.
A lot of current airstairs won’t reach the height of 1st floor doors of the current A380 and B747.
Pallet lifts also don’t reach the proper height.
We also need cater trucks that can reach 2nd floor of A380 and B747