Boeing 737-200: COMPLETED!!

Modeling Subjects Aircraft
1

Greetings all,

I saw the thread about an airliner GB, and seeing as how I’m right in the middle of building one now, I thought I’d share my progress. Here’s how it came to be:

Recently, I decided to “flap” one of the new Revell 737-800 kits, but seeing as how I haven’t done that before, I thought I’d better practice a little bit first. I’ve had an old Airfix Boeing 737-200 in my stash for a while and figured that would be a good subject to hone a technique on. Once I got it started, I realized I had one of the ATP Piedmont Airline decal sheets, so the “practice” subject has turned into my currect project. After this, the -800 should be a snap! [:)]

Here’s my progress thus far…

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http://gunsagogo.org/newnose.jpg
Here you can see the difference sanding the nose makes!

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Cut out Landing Light position

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nav light lense
Nav Ligtht lens

detailing 1
Starting to detail the LE Flap bays

foil start 1
Getting the foil pieces squared away

foil start 2
The first 4 pieces are applied

Here’s a couple update pictures of the just finished foil application and the engine pylon.

foil applied
foil workup
The fore section has 7 pieces of foil, and the aft has 11. I still have to clean up the edges but the hard part’s already done! It took a total of 9 hours (and a stab wound… I’ll explain later) to apply all the foil! [:O]

engine pylon
Here’s one of the engine pylons… like it? [:)]

Now… the Stab Wound…
During the foiling process, there was a freak accident that occurred: I’d laid my big scalpel on the desk while getting ready to apply one of the small pieces of foil along the nose, holding it with tweezers. The piece of foil fell, so I automatically closed my legs together to prevent it from going into the twilight zone… what I DIDN’T notice, I had knocked against the desk and the scalpel started rolling!! Just as my legs were about to come together, the scalpel landed crossways between my thighs, and I effectively STABBED my left inner thigh, deep, with the 1 inch blade! I looked down and there it was, dangling from my leg… I pulled it out, compressed it with my hand, and there for about 45 seconds (and even NOW if I think about it), I didn’t know if I was going to yell, vomit, wet myself, or what!!!

I had to get 3 stitches and a Tetnus shot! Thank God it didn’t cut any vessels, but it did cut a nerve because there’s an area about the width of a tennis ball on the inside of my left knee that is now completely NUMB! :doh:

Anyway…
Building & Limping…
Take care,
Frank

2

Here’s an update photo for tonight…

I trimmed up the fuselage, and after painting the pilots and installing the windscreen, it will be ready for the 1st coat of slick stuff…

While it’s curing, I’ll get the wings worked up and ready to attach.

Take care,
Frank

3

That looks fantastic. I’m going to be working on a couple of airliners very soon and I want to scratchbuild the flaps and slats. You’ve motivated me! Keep the pictures coming!!

Bob

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Frank Nice progress. I like what you did with the flight controls[tup] that’s going to look real nice. I do have a question though how do you mask all the cabin windows amd what paint are you using for the white. Looking forward to seeing some more pics. Ouch!!! hows your leg, I hope your feeling better.

Cheers

Bear

5

This reminds me of why I put my Southern Airways DC-9 away for the holidays, I was afraid I’d hurt myself … [:D]

6

Great stuff, Frank!

BTW, folks…here’s a link to the airliner group build Frank mentioned:

/forums/869167/ShowPost.aspx

It will run from 1 Jan 08 to 31 Dec 08.

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Thanks everyone! [:)]

I will reply properly later on today, as my time now is short, but I thought I’d pop in here and post the illustration I done showing the technique I use to make landing lights…

I’ve got the lights mounted on one wing and will be doing the other side today sometime.

Take care and I’ll talk to you all later.
Frank

8

Frank,

What a great ,well illustrated tip/technique. I’ll probably give that a try on the next build I do that has a similar arrangement. In fact - I’ve got an old, built, Revell Hurricane that would be just the thing to try it out on. There’s just a raised panel line square on the wing’s leading edge where there should be a landing light.

Thanks !

Chris

9

Thanks Chris, [:)]

Finally finished all the sub-assemblies and began putting the elements together. :slight_smile:


Then I took her out for her very first trip around the patch…

It is now covered in the slick stuff and resting in the hangar for the next couple days to keep the dust-bunnies off. :slight_smile:

Thanks, and take care,
Frank

10

Frank,

Your test flight pics are amazing considering the overall length of the completed kit is a little over half the width of my computer screen. [bow]

PS: Noticed you’re using a safer “non rolling” Fiskars knife now. Nice grippy handle on that. [8D]

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Hi Phil,

Yes, the ‘blades’ will not come off the table on their own anymore, and make pretty good support stands too! [:)]

Thanks; I got in a habit of taking pictures like that a few years ago because it seems when I look at a “picture” of the project, flaws that are invisible at the table, are revealed. [tup] Photosuite enables me to remove the obvious ‘supports’… then I ‘uniform’ the lowest ‘fog’ setting, and it makes a good depth of field affect. [:)]

Actually, the cabin windows will remain open until the 1st glosscoat, cheatline, and window frame decals are applied.

The paint is all Testors spray & brush enamel, and weathering from thinned blends of the same. I’ll wet-sand, buff, and wax the finish after the 2nd glosscoat, which will effectively smooth everything out. [:)]

Take care,

Frank

12

Frank;

As a lover of liners, what a great looking build. You’ve done amazing work with detailing this little kit. I have this one that I want to do in Delta livery with the Power Puff girls log on the tail. Great looking white finish and use of foil. I also like the diagram of doing landing lights. I have a 1/72 Heller AWACS B707 I’m working on and I’ve been trying to find a good way to make the inboard wing lights and this example has given me some ideas.

Thank you for the information and pictures.

Neil

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Yeah, this is super! Thanks.

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Frank Thanks for the feedback, I hate working with white. I have an A340-300 in my stash and the masking of the windows and painting a white fuselage was enough for me to leave it in the stash. Great progress looks super can’t wait to see the end result.

Cheers

Bear

15

Goodmorning all,

I thought I’d publish a couple of update pictures of my build, as the markings are beginning to make there way on the model.

I applied the blue cheatline from the ATP decal sheet, but it was too wide, so I applied some white pinstripe decals in an attempt to thin them out. That didn’t work because the blue & white contrasted so bad it took several of those pin stripes to mask it… which looked awful! I removed all of it, re-painted the white, and went to apply another blue cheatline from the YS-11 sheet… even after overspraying the sheet before starting, the decal completely desintegrated when I tried to slide it on! Finally, I reverted to the “old school” method of masking and painting the cheatline… take that!

After the blue dried, I applied a clear film decal over the window holes to make clear window glass, then tomorrow I’ll put on the silver window frames.

After I get the rest of the decals applied, I’ll overspray it with glosscoat and work on the landing gears while it’s curing.

It’s coming along… driving me crazy along the way, but it’s coming along!

Take care,

Frank

16

This looks great! The lowered laps really give it some animation. Nice tip with the clear decal film over the windows. Did you actually open them up?

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Thanks David,

If you think the flaps animate it now, just wait until you see how I’m going to mount it up for display… animation will take on a whole new meaning! [;)] I’m not going to elaberate on the technique now, but will post a step by step illustration when it’s finished.

The window ports were open on the kit, so at least I didn’t have to do that… but making windows from clear decal sheet works very well. I always thought see-through windows would be a good opportunity to add some more detail to an airliner, and it only requires a piece of clear decal paper. Here’s an illustration I done showing some ideas I incorperated into this, and the Continental B738 builds.

Hope this helps,

Take care,

Frank

18

That is excellente! What a great tip and a super graphic to illustrate. I would have never considered that, although I have wondered how one might add “people” to these models. Neat trick.

I look forward to your display.

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Frank,

As this is my very first post to this amazing forum I’ll try no to write a long one… But I was just looking around and trying to see other people’s projects to find out some ideas to execute later on my own projects so I found that foil going to your 737’s fuselage and I just let my jaw came all the way to the floor. how do you do that??? I mean, here in my country there’s no such “culture” of modelism and there’s few publications were we can take out some tips and stuff like that, maybe to you guys is the every-day-technique but not here! so, where I can learn to do that?? I have a project just on the go, is an Italeri 1:48 A-10 Thunderbolt, But I haven´t gone so far with it because I want to make it special, a nice one… That’s how I ended up here, learning from you guys… so, any tips are welcome.

20

Thanks for the airliner photos. I do not see many airliner builds documented here. I have several that I hope to build in the future. I found an old NWA DC-8 kit at an airliner show this past October and I recently bought a Zvezda Aeroflot Il-86 kit as well. I had not yet see how the foil was applied so yours photos were helpful. I have over 1,000 die cast airliners ranging in scale from 1:200 to 1:500.

With regards to your hobby knife. Good that it was not turned 90 degress or you might find yourself speaking in a higher octive come this day.

Peewee