1/200 Revell Boeing 737-200 from British Airways

Hello, fellow modellers

This time I’ll share with you my recently finished Boeing 737 in 1/200 scale from Revell (formerly the PK-803 Matchbox kit.) I chose to build this airplane in 1/200 scale because I previously bought a Boeing 747 in that scale, as a bigger Boeing 747 can’t be put inside my models’ display cabinet. I hope to finish my 747 soon, and I’ll display both airplanes together to show their enormous size difference.

I began building the Boeing 737 kit 15 years ago by joining the fuselage halves together. Then I stored the kit until this year, when I decided to finish it. As the joints of the main wings to the fuselage, and of the engine pods to the wings aren’t good enough, I made two assembly mistakes that I couldn’t correct because I noticed them after the cement was completely dry. Fortunately, these mistakes are not so evident. The navigation lights that are located near the rear tip of each main wing were molded only on the top wing halves, so they weren’t cylindrical. I cut them, and replaced them with short and thin cylindrical pieces that I cut from pieces left from other kits. The antenna that goes over the top of fuselage was scratchbuilt using a small piece of acetate foil.

For painting the corroguard panels on the top of the main wings and the stabilizers, I mixed two shades of grey (FS36270 Medium Grey and FS36118 Gunship Grey) and German Silver, all from Model Master. I think that the result is darker and less metallic than I expected. For the Boeing 747 I'll put more Medium Grey and German Silver in the mix.

Some decals gave me problems that I fortunately could solve. I had to paint completely the “H” character and part of the second “R” character of the port side of the “British Airways” sign, and also part of the second “S” character of the starboard side sign, because the decals broke after they were put on their places. I also had to correct the joint of the two tail decals at the bottom of the airplane to make it completely symmetrical, by adding little and narrow strips of white and black decals that I cut from decals left from other kits. I also had to mix and paint part of the blue, green and red areas that surround the stabilizer-fuselage joints, the ones on the rear edge of the vertical fin, and also the blue area of the tail behind the stabilizers. In the case of the leading edge of the vertical fin, I carefully painted the space left between the port and starboard decals with aluminum paint, to match it with the leading edges of the wings and the stabilizers.

To avoid problems with the decals that represent the passenger windows (as these windows were molded deeply on the fuselage sides,) instead of using the decals I painted each one of these windows. I do used the decal that represents the cabin windows, but I carefully painted their edges with matt aluminum paint (as can be seen in the last photograph) to represent the edges that can be seen in photographs of the full-size airplane.

This one is just the second commercial service airplane that I’ve built in my life (the first one was a Concorde from Airfix that I built more than 40 years ago.) By building this model I learned some tricks and tips that I may use in future projects.

Your comments are welcome.

With best regards,

Orlando Sucre Rosales

7 additional images. Click to enlarge.