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Once upon a time, well, in 2016 anyway, there was the Airliners III group build...... Despite never having built an airliner before, I decided this was going to be my first group build contribution. In a triumph of enthusiasm, naivety and recklessness, I entered late on with an Eastern Express Boeing 737-300. The group build archive documents my attempts to force the warped fuselage and wings into reasonable shapes, but it was inevitable that I would eventually run out of time. For the past year the model and I have had occasional interactions, with long periods of rest and recuperation in between, but finally, having fought me all the way, I've reached the point where I can declare the thing complete. Even the painting, given that its such a simple scheme, took far too long, learning that Humbrol Clear over Halfords Appliance White is a no-no, and that DBI Boeing grey goes on beautifully and simply, but comes off with equal ease. The paint scheme is a bit of an oddity, and represents G-GDFB in the transition livery it wore in 2011 when it became part of the Jet2 fleet having previously served with Aegean Airlines. Decals are from Britmodeller's own RICHW, and gave refreshingly little trouble. Apologies for the makeshift photographic set up, all white models are a bit of a challenge. Would I do another Eastern Express 737? Absolutely.........not. Jon

Hello everybody!!! It's just few day till Christmas and I finally got my Daco 737-300 1:144!! Great!! 🙌 It's my first model ever!!! I'm quite scared how it will look like when finished😨 I'm going to make it Jet2 plane, reg G-CELK Jet2 Edinburgh. And why Jet2 and why LK? I've first flown aircraft in Jan 2012, Manchester to Prague on Jet2 737-300, but I don't remember the reg. And LK is as I currently live and work @Edinburgh and even work at the airport! Now to the model. It's pretty nice. I've found only one small dent on underneath the wing. No big deal. I will add more photos as building will continue DAY 1

Boeing 737-200 South African Airways 1:144 Airfix with modifications The third of my modified Airfix 737-200's. The mods are to cut away the cockpit area and replace it with the clear moulded part from a Daco/Skyline 737 kit, and correcting the engines from the 100 series to the 200 Advanced. This involves lengthening them and fattening the pylons. I also added a bit of cockpit detail and a pair of crew figures from N gauge railway passengers, and opened out the wheel bays to make them 3 dimensional. The Airfix kit is old but basically good, and benefits from these few mods. After all this work some top quality decals are required, so it was straight to Draw Decals website where I found this beautiful scheme. SAA had one the best liveries of all time, and their aircraft were usually kept in sparkling condition. Underside showing the opened out wheel bays Crew at work! With something else. No contest. It has to be my other ZS- registered aircraft, the hilarious 737-800 in Kulula livery, also from Draw Decals. Some info about the modifications. Test fit of the cut out for the Daco clear part Modified engines. Lengthened with a 6mm section of a bomb, covered with Milliput. Pylons widened with plastic sheet. Basic parts for improving the model It was all extra work, but well worth the effort. Thanks for looking, John

Hello all. It's great seeing the variety of subjects being covered, both in terms of time and geographical coverage. For my entry I'm going with this kit; Hasegawa's 1/200 B738 Yes I know, another 737, not the most original of builds. However, you may have noticed that there were very few decals on display in that picture, and that is because I'm not going for the box scheme. Instead I'm using Draw Decal's offering to build a plane in the colours of everyone's favourite South African low-cost carrier. It's educational too! Not sure when I'll be able to start, but hopefully sometime in the coming week.

Aer Lingus Boeing 737 Authentic Airliners 1:144 This is the Authentic Airliners all resin kit, the most accurate Boeing 737 in any scale. They are pricey kits and I have long wamted to try one, and secured this one via e-Bay for a fair price. There are few parts, all beautifully cast and a small fret of photo etch to go with it. There were no instructions, which was not a problem for the main assembly, but left me wondering where a few of the etched parts were meant to go. This was an early release with a separate clear casting for the cockpit much like the Daco and Minicraft 737's have. Current kits are all-resin fuselages without the clear part, which I think is a better idea. 'With something else' - These 2 could frequently be seen parked near each other at airports in the early 70's. (Welsh Models Vac BEA 1-11 500) This project did not run smoothly, every now and then I seem to get a 'jinxed' build, and this was certainly one of them! It is a beautiful kit and well worth getting, just try to avoid the errors I made along the way! Troubles I had; Mixed my own Coroguard for the wings, and it looked too dark. Remasked, resprayed with lightened mix. Cockpit insert was fine and blended in well, fuselege sprayed with Appliance white. After a couple of weeks the join across the top of the fuselage began to show as a 'ghost'. Re-Milliputted it, blended it back in, reprimed, resprayed, remasked and redid the grey on the fuselage. The Appliance white on the fuselage then developed a 'micro-crazed' affect where I had re-filled the cockpit join. Happily this was solved with micromesh polishing cloths. I did not get the undercarriage right. the main legs were too 'stilty'. Cut them off, shortened and re-fixed them. Decals went wrong, I had to strip them off and buy another set. After the first attempt something did not look right. I realised that the cheat line was too high. The cabin windows needed to be lower, and the cheatline curve upwards to the cockpit window. The white paint under the green cheatline should be half the width of the cheatline itself. I had to strip it all off, and order a new set of decals. On the second attempt, I lined up the cheatline with the white underneath it, and curved the front 3cm or so up to the cockpit windows. It is a subtle change but makes a huge difference. A picture speaks a thousand words. Upper - first wrong attempt. Lower - second correct attempt. Another little 'gotcha' I noticed is that one of the Irish flags is upside down on the decal sheet. Simply cut if from the 'Aer Lingus Irish International' titles and rotate it 180 degrees, the green portion of the flag is always on the left. Top one is ok, lower one needs correcting; Well there were times when I nearly gave up on this one, but I am glad I persevered. It is a nice kit and a lovely looking livery, so don't be put off by my errors. I've now got an Authentic Airliners Boeing 707 to have a go at! Thanks for looking John

The old Airfix kit finished in the markings of Honduran airline 'SAHSA", which had such a poor safety record that someone dubbed the airline's name an acronym for 'Stay At Home, Stay Alive'. All of the kit's windows were filled and replaced with decals, the model was re-scribed, u/c doors replaced and Bra.Z resin engines substituted for the skinny kit ones. The swooshy scheme was masked and painted, decals were ALPS-printed.

Here are some Airfix kits that get a frequent bashing in some forums. Well they may very well show their age but I found them interesting to build. Airfix' 747 is somewhat of a special case as many aspects of the kit are quite wrong compared to the original. I tried to fix some errors like the engines as good as possible and the landing gear.I replaced some parts of the landing gear with parts taken from a Revell 747-200 to get a more accurate shape like the maingear doors. I filled the gap in the engines with filler and sanded them smooth then primed them with Tamiya white primer.After drying the silver and orange was sprayed on. Some other parts,like the too wide tail I left as it is.It would have been way too much work to get it fixed and my experience in correction work on model kits was not that good then.I could have used a tail taken from a Revell 747-200 but I didn't want to cut up one oy them for spares... The wingtip antennas were made of toothpicks. The decals are mostly from the box but they were hard to deal with.Windows and other deatils come from an aftermarket 747 detail set. Thats all I did to make it look somewhat like a 747. It was an interesting experience but upcoming 747-100s and -200s will be Revell kits... The 737 was much more easy to assamble.Just to get the wings alligned was a task. For this one I opted for another exotic scheme.Air Tanzania. Its very colourful and fits the "Baby Boeing" well. Enjoy...

This summer I took the family for a holiday in Stavanger, Norway, flying from Manchester with Norwegian. The aircraft waiting at the gate was LN-NOM 'Greta Garbo' so when Ruben of Lima November decals announced a sheet for this very aircraft I just had to get one. The kit is the Revell 737-800 with my own mods to extend the winglets and fix the undersides of the engines to get the correct shape. This particular aitcraft carries a satellite receiver on top of the fuelsege in front of the fin, and this was scratchbuilt from plasticard. After that it's an easy enough build. The Lima November decals are superb, fitting very nicely and with good colour density. All are silk screen printed except for the 'Greta Garbo' on the tail which is laser printed. The instructions are very good, even containing photos of the real aircraft including a good close shot of the satellite instalation. So, I introduce you to Miss Garbo.... And with another of my Norwegian fleet, "Edvard Grieg" Thanks for looking, John

This time it's an old one from South Africa. Airfix 737 in it's original South African Airways scheme - decals by FDcal Comments welcome mike