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Mach2 is to release 1/72nd Douglas DC-9-30 kits: - ref. GP.112SW - Douglas DC-9-30 - Swissair Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-swissair-mach-2-gp112sw-199199.html - ref. GP.112HUG - Douglas DC-9-30 - Hughes Airwest Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-hughes-airwest-mach-2-gp112hug-199198.html - ref. GP.112BMI - Douglas DC-9-30 - British Midland Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-british-midland-mach-2-gp112bma-199197.html - ref. GP.112KLM - Douglas DC-9-30 - KLM Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-klm-mach-2-gp112klm-199196.html - ref. GP.112DEL - Douglas DC-9-30 - Delta Airlines Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-delta-airlines-mach-2-gp112del-199193.html 9l - ref. GP.112NOR - Douglas DC-9-30 - Northeast Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-dc9-30-northeast-mach-2-gp112nor-199194.html - ref. GP.112AG1 - Douglas VC-9C - USAF Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-vc9c-united-states-of-america-mach-2-gp112af1-199195.html - ref. GP.112USN - Douglas C-9B - US Navy Source: https://www.aviationmegastore.com/en/modelling/douglas-c9b-us-navy-mach-2-gp112usn-199192.html V.P.

This was a model kit I wanted for a long time. As far as I know,its still the only DC-9-10 in 1/72 scale. Originally released in 1965 by Aurora,Atlantis Models re-released it recently in the original box art. This time a new decal sheet is provided and offers Hughes Air West and TWA markings.The decal sheet is wonderfully printed.The only thing missing are cockpit window decals,wich I find a little disappointing. For that reason,and also given the size of the model,I ordered 3D windows from Authentic Airliners. The kit has only a few parts,and not a lot of detail,but given the age of the kit,its understandable. I did not change too much on it,the only things I added were the fences under the wingfront and I scribed in the slats. The fit is good with some putty and sandig required at the seams. Painting the yellow for the Hughes Air West livery was the most work.As simple as it looks,but getting the yellow paint covering was a timeconsuming task. As there are no more Tamyia spray cans available in Switzerland,I tried the Gunze sprays for the first time. But these spraycolors are just not that quality standard that Tamyia achieved. After using almost 3 spraycans I gave up and used the airbrush to get the desired finish.There I used Tamyia acrylic paint. I should have done that in the first place,it would have saved me a lot of time as well as money.Well...lesson learned. The rest of the paintjob went without trouble,decals in place and sealed with Gunze Aqueous gloss varnish...done. Given the size of the actual DC-9-10,its still impressive in 1/72 A cool,nice kit that captures the look of this Douglas classic quite well,despite being simple in its design. Enjoy

Here is the good old Airfix DC-9-30 in the colours of ATI circa 1991. Although it has been around for the best part of 50 years the Airfix kit is realistic and the foundation for a good model. According to DC-9 authority Jodie Peeler, it is considerably more accurate than the much newer Fly kit which I strongly disliked the one time I built it. The main issues with the Airfix DC-9 are the lack of the “lobe crease” between the upper and lower fuselage segments, the poor representation of the cockpit roof and windscreen and the difficult join down the middle of the engine pylons. Short of moulding a new fuselage it isn’t really possible to make a totally accurate lobe crease but an illusion can be created by scribing a line 6mm below the cabin windows then carefully scraping and filing the lower part of the fuselage. I used Oyumaru and superfine Milliput to clone the clear cockpit section from a Minicraft MD-80. A fair bit of packing, filling and sanding was needed to blend this to the DC-9 fuselage but I think the final result is an improvement on the original. While working on the fuselage I drilled out the pressure relief valve and the APU exhaust and re-scribed the raised detail where appropriate. The easiest way to deal with the engine pylon issue is to cut the pylon segments from the nacelles, attach them to the stubs on the fuselage, fill the joint then re-attach the nacelles. Before you cut anything and before you join the fuselage halves, it makes re-assembly much easier if you attach the engines to the fuselage temporarily (Kristal Klear works well) and drill from inside the fuselage right though the pylons into the nacelles to take plastic rod locating pegs. That gives a final assembly a bit like the Minicraft MD-80. Still with the engines, the actuators for the thrust reversers are poorly represented and I made replacements from thin plastic guesstimated from photos. Small parts such as aerials, pitots, replacement undercarriage doors and the nose wheel FOD guard were fabricated from thin plastic. As usual the white is Halfords Appliance White. Metallics are by AK Interactive,Tamiya and Revell. Exhaust staining is done with artist’s pastels and, yes, I-RIKT was dirtier on the right because of the APU! Decals are by Classic Airlines. I’d guess they were designed for the Fly kit but a bit of minor bodging persuaded them to fit the Airfix one. The decals are annoyingly incomplete - they don’t include the ATI titles for the upper wings or the crests which should go above the aircraft name on the nose. I printed my own crests and sourced the wing titles from a spare V1 Decals MD-80 sheet. The V1 blue is too dark (which is why the sheet was in the spares box) but it’s better than I could do by any other method. I also replaced the Classic Airlines wing registrations which were too small. The windscreen is by Authentic Airliners and detail decals came from the spares box. Thanks for looking and as always constructive criticism is welcome. Dave G

The WIP is finished, so I decided to post the finished pictures here as well. I've wanted to make a DC-9 for a while now, but never came around to it until now. The DC-9 was the last civil aircraft that was designed exclussively by Douglas. I'm sure many civil aircraft enthousiast knows about the venerable DC-9, so no need to go into details here KLM had a total of 25 DC-9 aircrafts (both the -15 and the -30) and they served the airline from 1966 to 1989. I decided to build the DC-9-30 from Authentic Airliners. Many a great build has been made with Airfix and the kit is actually reasonably accurate, but this time I choose ease of building over price. With the airfix kit you have to do a lot more filling and sanding and I wanted to do something easy for now. Some things that I’ve noticed though is that the engines of Airfix are too short and too thick, the fuselage is too short, the vertical stabilizer has the incorrect shape and the wing sweep isn’t a 100% correct. Whether or not that is worth a more expensive resin kit is up to you. Anyway, without further ado: The DC-9 by Authentic airliners is a joy to build (as are all the other kits by AA). I’m happy with the way the colour of engines turned out. I’ve experimented a bit with the metal colours as I want to get more experience with them. After all, aircraft such as the DC-8 or DC-10 in KLM colours had their bellies entirely metal coloured in more or less the same colour as the DC-9 engines, so I can use all the practice I can get before I even start working on those! Thanks for looking and see you next time! Regards, Martijn

I've wanted to make a DC-9 for a while now, but never came around to it. Now's finally the time! The DC-9 was the last civil aircraft that was designed exclussively by Douglas. I'm sure many civil aircraft enthousiast knows about the venerable DC-9, so no need to go into details here KLM had a total of 25 DC-9 aircrafts (both the -15 and the -30) and they served the airline from 1966 to 1989. From an old Dutch newspaper article: "KLM has chosen the twin engined DC-9 as its successor to the six Vickers Viscounts, that have been in use since the sixties. There wasn't much choice. Apart from the DC-9 only the British BAC 1-11 was a possibility. However, since the positive experienceKLM has had with the DC-8, the DC-9 was an obvious choice" That wasn't entirly true though, as KLM did think about the French Caravelle for a while. However, when the negotiations with Air Franch in Air Union came to naught, a possible order for Caravelle's fell through. On hindsight not a bad thing, as the DC-9 was a better choice in this case. Still, she would have looked nice in a KLM livery... On a final side-note, KLM did fly the BAC 1-11, which was leased while waiting for their DC-9. I'm definitely going to build the BAC1-11 from AA in KLM colours one day. Anyway, I have flown on the DC-9-30 at least once! I can't remember exactly when, but it should have been somewhere by the end of the eighties, begin nineties. I can't remember if I have ever flown in a KLM DC-9, but I did fly one from Iberia of which I have a picture. The man with the red shirt in front is my father. The little running guy with a cuddling cloth in is hand is me I decided to build the DC-9-30 from Authentic Airliners. Many a great build has been made with Airfix and the kit is actually reasonably accurate, but this time I choose ease of building over price. With the airfix kit you have to do a lot more filling and sanding and I wanted to do something easy for now (my next build is probably going to be the Aeroflot AN-10, which will require a lot more work I presume). Let's get this show on the road! This is going to be it: The parts (all crisp and greatly moulded as per usual with AA): The decals are from F-Decal The cockpit and window decals are from Authentic Airliner decals. Resin models should be thoroughly washed. If not, you can have severe problems with painting later on (as I have learned from experience). Next, the parts can be removed from the casting leftovers. I use a small saw for this like on the picture, or a Dremel. Make sure to use respiratory protection and proper ventilation. Resin particles can be nasty for your lungs. The rudder should be attached seperatly. Nice one from AA, this makes for a more realistic effect! The stabilizers can be glued too. See what I mean when I say AA builds quickly? The engines will take up most of the time, due to the necessary filling, sanding and airbrushing the different shades of metal. Glued the behind of the fuselage. The engines have been glued as well and have been filled, just as the stern of the fuselage. The flap hinge fairings have been attached, Those look a lot nicer compared to the Airfix kit. The fit has been excellent so far. The small crannies that are left will be filled with Mr. Dissolved putty. The engines have been sanded, but still some slits are left. It will require a second round of filling and sanding. The stern has been sanded down as well. The fuselage, tail and engines are now ok, so they can be primed. I have used Mr. Resin for a primer. However, the wings can no longer be primed with Mr. Resin, as it is no longer available on the market. Hopefully the normal primer will work as well. The line that was left over from casting on the fuselage was still visible, so I had to sand that down a bit more. Still some small holes where left on the engines. I filled them with car filler and sanded it down with a fine grit for a more smooth whole. The airbrushing can already commence. I masked the lower half of the fuselage and added a normal white primer. The top of the fuselage has been airbushed! Is used Revell 50 with a bit of white to get the 80's KLM blue. The engines have been primed with Alclad II Gloss black primer (as a base for the metal) I'm not sure which metal colour to use for most of the engines. It's a dull metal colour, so I'm guessing I'm going to use either aluminium or steel, but I'm open for suggestions. To be continued!

Some more airliners came off my busy production line last week. The old but very nice Airfix DC-9s. Despite its age,it is very well detailed,with good fit (except the doors) and the shape is pretty well captured by Airfix. I rescribed the flaps and panels on the wings as they were just raised lines on the kit,otherwise it was a straight OOB build. The "Fly",AZmodel,Karaya...or whatever the other DC-9 kit is coming from, has recessed panellines and other nice touches,but I find the Airfix kit still a nice replica of this classic and a re-release would be highly anticipated. Anyone from Airfix reading this...?? I worked on those 3 DC-9s at the same time,so they got finished almost on the same day as well. The KLM and IBERIA DC-9s,the decals came from the respective kits. The windows and details are from the superb Flying Colors MD-80 detail set. For the Aeropostal Avensa DC-9,I used the decal set from Classic Airlines courtesy of Nick Webb. The quality is superb,very thin decals but great to handle.The only small issue was that the cheatline and the tail part is slightly too long.This required some cutting and adjusting.Otherwise the decals fit perfect. I very much enjoyed building these 3 classic Douglas airliners and they will receive a nice spot in my vitrine. Hope you like them And a DC-9-30 group shot

Airfix DC-9 1:144 26 Decals 'Iberia' This is ye olde Airfix kit from the orginal 'KLM' boxing. As I have 4 of them in the stash I though I should build one of them, even though the Fly Models kit is a more modern tooling. It is still worth building as it has very good fit and is pretty accurate. The main problem with it is that it lacks the prominent 'Lobe Crease' along the lower fuselage. I scribed it in with an Olfa P cutter, and worked along the line with a sub miniature half round file to emphasise it. It also lacks the eyebrow windows on the cockpit glazing, and although I left the glazing clear, I used the eyebrows off the decal sheet. Iberia's 9's all seemed to have an amount of thrust reverser staining at the back end, so i tried to replicate this also, with a puff of Tamiya 'Smoke' from the airbrush. It's one of my favourite classic airliners, and it has the plus of a red cheat line! And 'With something else', A Fly Models 'Baby 9' in Draw Decals TWA livery. There was a 'Gotcha' with the decals. the instructions only show a Post side profile, so i reapeated the layout on the starboard side. A couple of days later looking on Airliners.net I spotted that it was wrong, which just goes to show the importance of checking references.. Out came the sellotape and I stripped the titles off. The ever helpful Mr Stringbag just happened to have some replacements so i was able to correct it. Thanks Chris! Can you spot the uncorrected error here? Thanks for looking, John

Here's my entry. Fly DC-9-32 and Iberia old livery decals from BOA. This is quite exciting because it's my first airliner ever and I haven't attempted NMF since the cold war.

AZmodel is to re-release its 1/144th McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 kit - ref. AZ14420 Source: http://azmodel.cz/avizo/AVIZOAZ-EN-0416.pdf V.P.

TWA Delivery Colors DC-9-15 1:144 Fly Models with Draw Decals First build of 2015, but really it was mostly done in 2014 and just finished today. This is the Fly Models kit of the series 10, in the Itavia boxing. It comes with 2 complete fuselages for a series 10 and a series 30 DC-9, and a litlle resin set of smaller wingtips to shorten the 10's wing, and the little fences that the 10 also had. It was a straightforward build, the only slight thing I disliked was the solid cockpit windows, prefering to have them clear if possible. I wasn't that taken with the Itavia livery, but fortunately Draw Decals produce a lovely set for TWA's delivery scheme from the 1960's reviewed here.I can't resist a classic 60's scheme with a cheatline, especially on the DC-9, so these 2 made the perfect match. Here she is looking very much the elegant lady that she was back in the day; And for the traditional 'With something else, how about a Pan Am 727-100 Airfix with TwoSix decals) I couldn't resist a second 'with something else', this livery is so evocative of the original Airfix 1960's boxing of the 727 in the TWA scheme. I still have one in my stash, but the decals have yellowed. I'll build it one day if Greg at Draw Decals ever produces it! Thanks for looking, John

Hi all This rolled off the production line today. Its a rebuild. I built it in DHL Colors about 3 years back, i posted it on her and a lot of people probably cried! I stripped the paint off and the glue, it then sat untouched for a couple months. I rebuilt it early last year, it isnt my best, but its been sitting on the shelf of desper ever since. I decided it waas time to get it finished, so i looked for a scheme i liked, saw the two six one and ordered away, today the decals arrived. On the aircraft straight away, couldnt resist. Not my best, but im happy with it. Thanks Enjoy Thanks

Hi, My Boeing 737-100 project is little bit on hold, because I'm currently traveling between Munich and London. Still there is need to get something ready so I took this kit to Munich. Basic kit is AZmodels DC-9 in Swissair packet I will use in this case kits original decals so this will be a Swissair plane. Fit is not that bad. And main components together. More will follow.