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Having just read Skodadriver/ Dave G's narrative about his Revell 727 build in Hapag-Lloyd markings, i thought i'd expand on his excellent body of work and start a new thread here. Many of you know i presently have a second Vickers Super VC10 and Boeing 720B in the works, but i pulled this derelict off my shelf of doom to work on in the weeks right before i moved, because it gave me plenty of opportunity to glue, fill, and sand.... since i had to put away all my painting stuff. The model was started sometime in the early 1990s, so... if it manages to get done it will be *my* new record holder for oldest enduring shelf of doom rescue. When i first re-examined the model, the fuselage halves were assembled, seams filled and the windows were filled and sanded flush. And thankfully, all of the rivet-encrusted exterior was smooth. Given how much work that entailed, probably explains how it got to the shelf in the first place. The first thing i wanted to improve on the model was the integration of the horizontal stabilizers. Revell engineered this in 1964 to be a continuous, easy to assemble, spanwise piece. It is however, not optimal for construction painting, and final assembly. So, i began by sawing the horizontal stabilizers off the fin cap using one of those wonderful JLC razor saws. I attached the fin cap to the vertical fin and proceeded to fill any gaps and sand/ blend the cap into the top of the vertical fin. With that done, we moved to removing the boilerplate-like rivets from the stabilizers along with some gratuitous ejector pin marks. This was done over maybe a half hour, while listening to a local jazz music station playing on Alexa... With that done, i wanted to address the issue of installation. One of the things i remember about the later Airfix 727-100 was their incorporation of a simple pivot/trunnion located at the aft stabilizer spar. A similar approach, but with the pivot made from metal would be a lot stronger and also facilitate installation in the "End Game". I first did some rough cleanup of the butt ends, then located and drilled a hole into the stabilizer for which to install a pivot. At the same time, i marked the corresponding location in the fin cap- the silver plastic is of tremendous help here-, and drilled a hole all the way through the fin to the other side. A Boeing engineer once told me, "One of the hardest things to do is to get two holes to line up...", and so when i do this, i try to locate the starting point as accurately as possible with my needle in the pin vise tool and start by slowly drilling the pilot hole with the smallest drill bit practical and then carefully boring the hole bigger with progressively larger drill sizes. I used a piece of .047 diameter K&S Brass rod, as my material of choice for the pivot. With a positive, repeatable locating system established, i laid down bare metal foil along the side of the fin cap, re inserted the stabilizer (some would say Tailplane...), making sure it pressed up against the fin, and flooded the resulting gap with Starbond Black CA. The brass pivot helps the stab with alignment and it easily breaks free of any dried CA with a needle nosed pliers.... When the dried plastic/foil/CA composite is removed from the tail, and all the nastiness is sanded down, the result is something like this... You can see that adopting this approach drastically fills the unsightly chasms and gaps, resulting in a far more realistic, prototypical joint. Then its a matter of repeating the process on the other side... With the tail feathers mostly taken care of, i began to consider other things i could do to enhance the model. The first thing that came to mind was the position light in the tailcone. 727-100s had a clear tail fin cap, whereas the later -200 has a "solid" tail end cap, incorporating an antenna or a... whatever. While this whole evolution may look daunting, it really wasn't, provided you have the right tools. It's often the lack of the right tools for which to tackle a technical problem that leads to a model being relegated to polystyrene oblivion- as this one nearly was. For the record: I like T-tails. They look cool; You might even say they're sexy. However, having come off 4 T-Tailed aircraft in rapid succession (2 Buccaneers and 2 VC10s) i can attest that they're hard to work around during construction, and there's definitely a "right" way and a "wrong" way to go about integrating them into a plastic replica. In the end, it didn't take terribly long to do and it was rewarding to see my crazy crackpot idea work as well as it did. Now, my next installment is going to be either about the cockpit windows, or the wings. Not exactly sure which because i feel the cockpit area definitely needs help, but i'm not certain which approach i will take. So, as i get ready to settle into my new digs, expect to see a return to your regularly scheduled programming (Buccaneer, LOVEBUG, Boeing 720B, VC10, Skyraider) lineup. As ever, keep those letters and cards coming and.... Thanks for shopping!