The girlfriend wants me to build her a 747, specifically in Lufthansa livery. While I prefer fighter planes, she thinks the flying buses are way cooler (“Yes, an F-15 is cool, but can you ride on it to Europe and get a meal and use the bathroom?”).
I see Revell has one in 1/144 that looks cool, but I was hoping for something smaller, and really don’t know what’s out there. When I search, I see a lot of prebuilt and prepainted ones, which I don’t want to do.
Anyone have any ideas? I’m totally on board with buying aftermarket decals for Lufthansa if need be, and I’m looking for their current livery.
Thanks! I didn’t see Hasegawa on Spruebrothers or Scale Hobbyist, so I didn’t know they made them. Should have refined my eBay searches more, because when I looked just now, I found one for $18, and it even has the Lufthansa livery!
I’ll check the decals though, and if they don’t look so great, I’ll pick up that sheet.
I’ve used the decaldraw decals. Excelent decals but very thin and therefore prone to breaking or curling on themselves. Take care with them if you go that route.
Draw decals are fantastic but require care - they are super thin but lay down really nice. For small airliners I really like 1:200 scale.
Poke around - and see if you can find a Hasegawa 1:200 747, I know they did one for the space shuttle orbiter so there’s probably a stand alone kit.
I’ve done 3 or 4 airliners and am really starting to enjoy them. Like you I do a lot of millitary aircraft. I’m not really concerned about the details in this scale so I focus on cleaning up the tiny seems and putting a nice gloss coat down - like future. Maybe not scale but makes a nice display model.
I’ve got the Revel Of Germany 747-8 in Lufthansa livery (kit# 04276) at 1:144 scale in the stash. Haven’t built it yet, but I have built the older E-4B from the same company (which is a converted 747-200, with a mold date of 1983), and, although it needs a LOT of putty and sanding along the seams, it builds up pretty nice. The 747-8 has a mold date of 2012, so I would think that it’s fit would be a lot better than the E-4B. At 1:144, though, it’s BIG model when it’s finished.
I got the 1/200 Hasegawa 747 with Lufthansa decals, and I’m really not impressed with the fit quality, so it’s getting a fair amount of sanding on those fuselage seams. I don’t think I’ll rescribe it, but I’ll beat it into submission I hope.
Unfortunately the Hasegawa kit is the only one on the market, unless you want to buy a Hogan. I started one (Kalitta Air 747-400 for my dad), thought it was me, then started to build another and again, a step in the fuselage at nearly the same spots. I did manage to cleanly build the wings without much clean up work, and to prevent the fuselage from cracking I poured in some Bob Smith’s (?) slow cure epoxy.
