1/100 Doyusha Douglas DC-9-15 TWA Conversion
These Doyusha/Entex kits are probably the best quality large scale airliners you can get, if you can get hold of them. The DC-9 kits is very accurate in every way although quite a few years old now and long out of production does lack in many respects compared to current injection molded kits.
Having said that, they only made the DC-9-40 and not many airlines operated this version, so the only thing for it was to chop it either in to a 32 srs or 15 srs.
I got a set of TWA decals from Draw Decal a while a go and only just got around to this project, partly due to time and also bravery in cutting this perfectly good kit in to 3 sections.
In simple terms, to make a 40 in to a 15 you need to remove 8 windows front and 5 windows rear of the wing, or 40mm and 25 mm respectively. There was no wat I was going to do all the windows so they got blanked off, besides the decals come with windows which I actually prefer. Once cut with a razor saw, join them back up, being sure to align everything. Lots of filler later it's just a straight forward kit build.
For airliners I tend to use auto paints for a high gloss finish.
The Draw Decal's are very fine and require careful application. They're not your usual waterslide decals and the one I used were especialliy upscaled for the job.
This particular DC-9 of TWA is unusual in that its registration is suffixed with 'TW'. Normally all DC-9's at the time were just suffixed 'T', however some bright spark in the TWA paint shop added the 'W' in error. It flew for a couple of weeks with the reg N1053TW before reverting to standard company format.
Inspired by Bob Garrard's excellent collection of classic airliners photos, 32 cm nose to tail (or just over 12") is slightly larger than the usual kit stock at 1/100 scale. Photo reference from Bob Garrard's photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/23032926@N05/5030532917/in/set-7215... or if you're interested you can also find him on Airliners.Net
The stand is a little large but will do until I make one to fit.
Nice little build...I like the stand the way it is.
Clean build Alastair. Always good to see an airliner. Glad you showed your WIP picture. People looking at what looks like a nice simple build don't always realize what takes to get there.
beautiful
Great job there Alastair.
Nice airiner, pefect and clean. great work Alastair !
Not waterslide decals ?
Wireless keyboards can be hell ! So, again:
Nice Airliner, perfect and clean, great work Alastair !
And yes, i have read this often, silk screen decals ? Puzzled !
No waterslide decals?
Quite strange, will do airliners too, well done !
Great job Al. Superb DC-9 model.
Not an area of modelling I've personally explored but an interesting build and a great looking model.
Very clean looking DC-9, Alastair, and it's interesting to read how you managed to model this particular type.
Alastair, I might have worked on this airplane at one time in my career. We had some baby DC-9s from TWA in the Continental fleet in the late 80's after we sucked up nearly every domestic airline known to man. I was working in El Paso, TX at the time and those airplanes made up some of our Houston and Denver flights. El Paso is a high altitude (and in the summer high temperature) airport, and the baby Nines didn't have leading edge devices, so weight restrictions and really long takeoff rolls were the norm! The pilots said once they were airborne, the airplane handled like a fighter...Would love to see one with the old meatball on the tail...
Nice job on the conversion, makes for a good looking model.
Hi Jamie,
Great to hear that you worked on these DC-9's. This one became N653TX with CO before ending it's days in Mexico (XA-TBX) as a library. Might still be there now. Chances are this was one of your CO Baby 9's.
Funny, when I was looking at the model the other day I thought it looked a bit of a Hot Rod, thinking it would make a cool retro BizJet.
I was also thinking of doing another one in 1/72 scale in CO meatball scheme, but I'm thinking of a lot of things these days. Too many models, so little time.
Thanks for your comments.
653, I did work on this one! I had a picture of it at one time, an old Polaroid that has since faded so badly you can't tell what it is anymore. They were good reliable airplanes, and simple to work on. We had some DC9-30's and for some reason a few -50's that we probably got at some airline garage sale. The -50's didn't last long; I remember about ten of them with the markings painted out sitting on the ramp in ELP for quite a while. The Baby Nines didn't stay with us long either due their inability to carry a full passenger load out of El Paso and Denver in the summer. So most of my time was spent on the 727...
Great modeling Alastair. That's a lot of plastic surgery. But the results turned out great. I am liking this a lot. Thanks for posting and telling us the procedure you did on completing this model. Very informative.
California Steve
Thanks Steve
Alastair,
Another geat job.
Thanks Frank