Jump to content

1/72 Eastern Airlines 737-800


Recommended Posts

 

Fred,

apologies for not commenting sooner, but it seems you have recovered nicely from your faux-pas.  The trials and tribulations of a true large scale model builder!  I am just now getting caught up since moving my 98 year old mother-in-law in with us and working on my 1:1 scale Ford F-150.  Carry on with the 737, 738 & 739!

K/r,

Dutch

Link to post
Share on other sites
  • 2 weeks later...
Posted (edited)

Hi everyone,

     I had some time to work on this build today. This involved painting the nose section. I had to mix the light blue, and got mostly there. It's not quite a 100% match, but pretty close. Thankfully the darker blue was much easier. Revell's #54 blue was a dead on match. It's actually a very dark purple. At first I thought that no way would it match, so I touched up a small pin prick spot on the decals and it was right on. I do need to go back and do some touch ups, but the base is there. 

     Interestingly I had the decals try to peel up under the masking tape (Tamiya yellow). In the pic it looks really bad to the rear of the cockpit windows, but it just got hit with Solva-set, and was still settling down. These laser printed decals certainly are much more tricky to use than the normal screen printed ones, and will require much touching up. All for now. Fred.

20240308_163331.jpg

Edited by f5guy
Link to post
Share on other sites
8 hours ago, Dutch said:

Nose looks fabulous, Fred!

 

Thanks Dutch! It's getting there.....  Maybe in another week I'll have it done if I can get some bench time 👍 Fred.

Link to post
Share on other sites
14 hours ago, f5guy said:

the decals try to peel up under the masking tape

Putting any nature of adhesive masking material over decals is several orders of magnitude more modeling bravado than I have!

🖖 My your successes with that live long and prosper.

Wouldn't attempt that in the 1980s when custom painting model trains for money and bathing the Microsale decals in Micro Sol, and although those days are gone, still won't tempt that particular fate on what few models I now do for me. 

 

🎨 That two tone blue Eastern livery has long been a favorite. Is both simple and classy.

Link to post
Share on other sites
6 hours ago, southwestforests said:

Putting any nature of adhesive masking material over decals is several orders of magnitude more modeling bravado than I have!

🖖 My your successes with that live long and prosper.

Wouldn't attempt that in the 1980s when custom painting model trains for money and bathing the Microsale decals in Micro Sol, and although those days are gone, still won't tempt that particular fate on what few models I now do for me. 

 

🎨 That two tone blue Eastern livery has long been a favorite. Is both simple and classy.

 

It's something that I generally try to avoid myself, but this time around I had to blend the nose colors into the decals, so some careful masking was in order. The next time that I have to do stripes on a big airliner model I will definitely be painting the stripes if possible! Lesson learned 😂

 

Agreed.... that Eastern scheme is a real classic!  Fred.

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted (edited)

Alright everyone.... I'm calling this guy done! 

 

Overall I'm pretty happy with it, but it is DEFINITELY a three footer (looks good from three feet away or further). I made a ton of mistakes on this build, but was able to salvage things and learned a few new techniques in the process.

 

The biggest headaches were that gloss white paint, and the decals. Thanks to this build though, I have come up with a workable system for doing large amounts of gloss white now. The decals.... well.... they're very tricky. They are laser printed by V1 Decals, and I'm not bagging on them at all, but they were a handful. This is no doubt due to several things: Laser printing: The decals are quite stiff, and do not want to conform around any complex curves. They also do not react to well to decal solvents. Also their large size makes them difficult to apply, and they tend to want to fold over on themselves. You can see this problem in the close up of the right side cabin door. The decals folded over and I couldn't get it fixed, so I just had to cut it off and hope that I can find a correct size/color replacement in the future. In the future I will just paint the stripes, instead of using the supplied decals. This should greatly simplify things.

 

Also in the close up pic you can see the pitot tubes. There's four total. These are 3D printed by ARC's own John, who has an ebay store. I cannot recommend John's parts enough! They are superb, and look far better than the photo etch pitots supplied by the kit. Here's a link: https://www.ebay.com/itm/186275226139

 

So in the end it was a bit of a lengthy build, which is normal for me, but despite all of my goofs, I learned a lot, and it looks great in my display case. Even though it's a challenging kit, I highly recommend BPK's line of 737 kits. Two thumbs up 👍👍 Fred.

 

 

836772887_EasternAirlines737-8003.jpg

77618012_EasternAirlines737-8005.jpg

1733040022_EasternAirlines737-8002.jpg

Edited by f5guy
Link to post
Share on other sites
11 hours ago, ST0RM said:

Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. 

 

1000009742-01.jpeg

 

Huh.... I didn't know that they were born yet again. Thanks for posting this Jeff 😉 Fred.

 

 

 

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted (edited)

Thanks everyone for your very kind comments everyone, and for tagging along on this extended build! 

 

Next up for me is to finish off a 72nd AMT XB-70 that I started awhile back. Then I'll get going on either the Titan 757-200 or BPK 737-900 conversion that I'm doing progress builds on. Thanks for tuning in, Fred.

Edited by f5guy
Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, f5guy said:

Next up for me is to finish off a 72nd AMT XB-70 that I started awhile back

Ahh, so this handsome little 737 was merely a guinea pig for the true gloss white challenge. 🤔😆

 

Partly because of that gloss white challenge, I ended up not building the B-70 way back when and scrapped it for parts for sci-fi projects.

 

Well, look at it this way, at least the B-70 doesn't have stripes ...

 

(was also threatening to give the B-70 a removable cockpit roof like Revell's (not Monogram's) 1/72 Space Shuttle. The B-70 seriously needed more windows so as to see the cockpit in the model)

Link to post
Share on other sites
Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, southwestforests said:

Ahh, so this handsome little 737 was merely a guinea pig for the true gloss white challenge. 🤔😆

 

 

Well..... I started the XB-70 kit about 4 years ago, but hit the wall with it with all of the endless grinding and sanding involved. I also knew that my gloss white painting skills were not up to such a challenge, so it got set aside as painting approached. Now that I've tackled the "Rat 55" 737-200 and Eastern 737-800 builds, I feel that my gloss white skills are now up to the task of finishing off the XB-70. So I suppose both 737 kits were guinea pigs of sorts 🤣 Fred.

 

Edited by f5guy
Link to post
Share on other sites
On 3/21/2024 at 11:49 PM, ST0RM said:

Taxied past this Eastern 767 the last couple of days. Thought of your 737 project. 

 

1000009742-01.jpeg

Is, is this for real?  Or just a movie prop?

Link to post
Share on other sites
2 hours ago, Dutch said:

Is, is this for real?  Or just a movie prop?

It's a real jet on the ramp at March AFB. Look up N825KW.

Edited by ST0RM
Link to post
Share on other sites
5 hours ago, Dutch said:

Fred, KursadA has announced a 1/72 & 1/144 XB-70 sheet.  I suspect it will be available in the fall.  Fingers crossed! Dutch

 

Hi Dutch,

     I saw Kursad's announcement regarding decals, but will likely just finish mine off with the kit decals, as they're in good shape, and I want to keep this build moving forward. Thanks! Fred.

Link to post
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...