1/144 Skyline Models Boeing 737-400

Gallery Article by Carl Jarosz on July 31 2019

 

      

Boeing 737-400: "Spirit of Durango" Livery

Rest easy, ARC'ers; this may well be my last Boeing 737 submission with those striking Daco (Belgium) decals, covering a number of towns in Colorado and/or gambling establishments. Please refer to my previous submissions, under "Jet Airliners" in the Gallery section.

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This build involved another of Daco's "wrap around" type decal sheets, i.e. long elaborate looking decals that must be mated together to another decal from the sheet, and which must conform to multiple curved sides of the model. Be sure to keep several new, sharp Exacto #11 blades on hand to remove trapped air bubbles and help seat the curved decal. Then use plenty of Daco's decal setting solution. Using any other, like MicroSol, will leave a film on the painted fuselage from overbrush with the setting solution that will be impossible to get off: only reapplication of the fuselage paint color on the filmed areas will remedy this problem.

If any of you readers are contemplating building a 1/144 Boeing 737 - 300 or -400, I recommend you pay the little extra money for Skyline's molding of this aircraft; it has more detail than the standard Minicraft molding of the 737. Just being able to pitch the rudder adds more realism to a parked airliner; only the Skyline molding has this little feature. Main landing gear wells are also provided with the Skyline kit; Minicraft lets one see into an empty fuselage shell at the location of the main landing gear.

The Skyline kit also offers "winglets" to be affixed to ends of the wings, i.e. those curved, almost triangular devices. What do they do? They: 1) improve rate of climb at takeoff; 2) reduce end of wing air vortices generated at landing and takeoff, the kind that have caused smaller aircraft following a larger one to literally get flipped over and crash; 3) they reduce drag, which robs gas usage, which adds more cost to the air carrier, that then gets passed on to the flying public.

Finally, the Skyline kit includes a couple of photo-etched (PE) mini-sheets for the smaller parts, like the pitot tubes and blade antennas.

Carl Jarosz

Photos and text © by Carl Jarosz