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Western Pacific 737-300 Simpsons


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Just pulled this one out and got started a little while ago. I have to say this will probably be one of the most challenging builds Ive ever done. Tons of flash all over the place, no locating pins to speak off, and Ive been told that these decals can be very difficult to work w/.

Simpsons_001.jpg

Simpsons_002.jpg

Simpsons_003.jpg

Simpsons_004.jpg

Edited by Adam Baker
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Very accurate great details but very challenging! I finished the 737-500 a couple of months back and it was a lot of work. Quality of plastic was not great (very brittle) and the wing join is sloppy BUT it will build into a beautiful model with a little patience. Look forward to seeing it wearing Simpsons garb!

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Yea, Ive heard that the newer versions are much better, casting wise. I have noticed that the plastic seems to kinda have a soapy feel to it. And it sands down very quickly, so Im probably going to have to do some rescribing to bring back the panel lines that are on the fuselage.

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Adam: You are likely using the best kit for the decals that you have. Danny scaled the first run of the Simpsons decals expressly for this kit. I think that later decal run for these markings was for the Minicraft kit. I don't think the decal was ever scaled for the latest version of the 737 from Daco.

I have (or had) an email from Danny explaining how to tell the different decal versions apart but I can't seem to find it now. :crying2:

Good luck with your project, it will look great when finished!

Mike

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Ok, Ive spent quite a bit of time working on this thing today, and managed to make quite a bit of progress. I gotta say that this is definitely a very challenging model to build, that's for sure. I'm not used to building a model that has no form of locating pins or tabs or anything, so it's taking quite a bit of getting used to.

Here's my progress pictures for today.

Had to add 4 grams or .15 ounces, or roughly 20 bb's, which are just glued in place w/ CA.

Simpsons_005.jpg

Simpsons_006.jpg

Simpsons_007.jpg

Simpsons_008.jpg

And a question, does anyone know the angle that the rear horizontal tail planes should sit at? The instructions tell me how to make sure the wings have the correct dihedral on them, saying to lay the fuselage flat & level on a surface, and w/ the wings attached, the ends of the wings should be .530" off what ever surface the fuselage is sitting on, but nothing is given for the rear tail planes. One of them, right out of the box, looks to be pretty close, but the other is sitting almost perfectly perpendicular to the fuselage, instead of being canted upwards like the opposite side is doing.

Edited by Adam Baker
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Just a quick update.

Not a whole lot to show really. Just spent quite a bit of time filling seams. This thing has a less than stellar fit on all the parts, and the pic I took pretty much shows that. Tomorrow Im gonna stop & get a can of white sandable primer on my way home from work, so that I can get the first coats of primer down on it, to see how much more work its going to take to fill all these seems. I knew this wouldnt be a gimme build, but man, this is turning into a lot more work than I expected. Oh well, means it should hopefully turn into a gorgeous build when Im done (I can at least hope, haha).

Simpsons_009.jpg

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Awesome pic! Thanks.

I posted this in the airliner forum, and the general thought is that the tops of the stabs should be roughly even w/ the top of the fuselage, so thats what Im going to shoot for, since it should hopefully be an easy mark to hit. Just sand the tabs on the stabs, so that it fits fairly loose in the slot on the fuselage, and then just use a block of wood, or a 90° triangle to get it even w/ the top of the fuselage.

I have made a little bit of progress tonight, but not a lot. I was able to get the primer on my way home from work, and i have hte parts sitting in my paint booth. Ive put 3 or 4 coats of primer down. I can definitely see that I have some left to do before moving to the next phase of things.

Im also going to have to work on rescribing a lot of the panel lines, so that should be interesting.

Edited by Adam Baker
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Ive been told that the newer castings are a lot better. The kit Im using is the very first production of the 737 series that Skyline did.

I sure hope so. I've looked at my casting, and I don't recognize the wing-fuselage

joint, mine looks like this:

IMG_7212.jpg

Hopefully an improvement by Daco.. Keep up the good work! :thumbsup:

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Oh man, I like the look of that one alot better. Do you have pictures of any of hte other part sprue's? I'd love to see how they are layed out. I can tell your parts dont have nearly as much flash on 'em as mine do.

You can see in this pic how the wings are made. It makes for a pretty bad seam on the bottom of the wing.

Simpsons_004.jpg

Edited by Adam Baker
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I'm starting to think that you have the earlier release of Daco's 737.

Looking at the kit number, yours is SKY144-01, the one I have is

SKY144-05. Nowadays there are three differrent kits for the -300,

-400 and -500, with kit numbers SKY144-03, -04 and -05.

This one looks really neat, and no flash at all. According to a friend

of mine, it was a real pleasure to build as well.

Here you go with the pics..

Box

IMG_7279.jpg

Window frame (optional, you have to cut to use glass..)

IMG_7280.jpg

RH fuselage frame

IMG_7281.jpg

Backside of RH fuselage frame

IMG_7282.jpg

LH fuselage frame

IMG_7283.jpg

Backside of LH fuselage frame

IMG_7285.jpg

Decals

IMG_7287.jpg

Instructions

IMG_7289.jpg

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Yea, mine is the first release of the 737. This kit will let you do the -300, -400, or the -500, bu cutting the fuselage & inserting or removing certain parts.

Do the instructions for your kit tell you to remove .030" from the engine nacelles? IN mine, It says to remove .030" of material from the back end on the top & bottom of each engine nacelle half, and taper it so that you dont remove any material from the front. My guess is thats done b/c the -300 has a slightly narrower engine nacelle compared to the -400 & -500, but thats just a guess.

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Nope, the instructions says nothing about removing material

from the engine nacelles. These nacelles are divided into left

and right, not top and botton. Then an insert with the intake

duct and leading edge, for a seamless intake. Very clever

solution, I think. :P

By the way, mine is a -500, maybe that's why it doesn't

mention anything about removing material. Don't know what

the instructions for the -300 says..

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Are you sure that the -300 has different cowls to the others?

The new 737 is one of the best kits out there, or so I've heard. Haven't seen one 'in the flesh' though.

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Don't know what the instructions for the -300 says..

Nope, no engine modification required on the new B737-300 either. And as vc-10 mentions, I've never heard (or seen) of any difference between the -500 and the -300 nacelles. We have both at my airline and they look identical.

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Sorry, I meant back to front, not top to bottom. The nacelles in my kit are in 2 halves left & right.

Here is the instruction sheet for my kit. You can see toward the center left where it tells to taper the engine nacelle halves. You can also see in the center how it tells how to make sure the wings have the correct dihedral.

Instructions.jpg

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Hi all

You realy can't compare both kit versions, they are two different kits. Some history:

The first kit (the black boxes - which Adam is having) was done in 1998, when no other Boeing 737 kit beside Airfix -200 were available. The masters were done by my hands (scratch building...!) and the production was done using a low-quantity tooling system. When these tooling splitted in two parts - after having produced double the quantity originally anticipated - this meant the end of this kit. They were the only available option in that time, but you needed some modeling skills to finish it. There was only one kit, with a surgical option to enlarge or reduce it into a -400 or -500 (by intersections).

Some years later Minicraft released their -300 and -400, but I found I could do better (the Minicrafts have their aft fuselage section and tail quite wrong).

So I did, starting by measuring everything from the real aircrafts (thanks to Sabena who allowed me to do freely my things in their maintenance hangars). Every part was then designed in 3D on computer and the tooling was done in steel - like all mayor brands. Instead of one kit for all the three versions, three different boxings were now done - one kit for each fuselage version. These kits were released in 2005 and have the more colourfull boxing, and as they were designed by computer, the fitting is a lot more perfect (only a small thing on the lower wing has to be removed to get a perfect wing-fuselage fit, but that's all IIRC). It has cost me a small fortune too, and I'm only now starting to see a break-even figure (so it's still not a "profit adventure"). But like almost everyone says: they are the best airliner kits around, and that makes it good enough for me...

The original Simpson decals will fit both of my kits, as I only enlarged the second batch of Simpson decals to fit the (wrong) aft fuselage and the tail of the Minicraft kit.

I'll reprint soon the Simpson decals (yes, together with all other WP decals), which will ofcourse fit back my kits...

PS, scans of these "new" Boeing 737 kits in detail can be found on my website

Danny

DACO Products

http://ultra.glo.be/daco

Edited by DACO Products
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Dang, been so long since I had an update, this got pushed back to the 3rd page.

Ive been working on this one, but its been really slow going. So much work is required that Im having to kinda force myself to work on it. This is by far one of hte most difficult kits Ive ever worked on. Just so much sanding & filling, and parts just not fitting together very well.

Ive gotten most of the parts pretty well cleaned up, time to put down some more primer to check out how well the filler cleaned up, make sure i dont have any more areas where it came out rough, or spots I missed.

About all I really accomplished this weekend, building was, was getting the main landing gear bay in, and that in of itself was a real adventure. There are no locating points for the gear bay, so I just kinda had to play it by ear, hoping I had it in correctly. It kept trying to fall into the fuselage when I'd about get it slid into where I wanted it. I eventually ended up having to glue the MLG bay cover onto the bay, put it all in, and hten glue the bay in place. Not the best way to do it, but I guess it got the job done. After that, I was left w/ some pretty massive gaps around the ends of the bay cover, at the roots of the wings. That was kinda taken care of by putting styrene stock in the holes, and gluing them in place. After htat, I just smeared a ton of putty over it, and tomorrow I'll work on sanding it all smooth.

Once I get all this sanding done, then I get to go on to the next wonderful task, which is rescribing this thing since Ive lost so much of hte detail just trying to get it built.

Here are the pics I took of the MLG bay.

Simpsons_010.jpg

Simpsons_011.jpg

Simpsons_012.jpg

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