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Hello everyone, This is to introduce my project for the Airliner III Group Build. I haven't built a 1/144 aircraft in 40 years and for some reason I was a little scared. I thought I would do an Airfix 1/72 De Havilland Dragon Rapide instead. Then, after a conversation with TrojanThunder I received a pleasant surprise in the mail; an Airfix 1/144 KLM DC 9. Thank you! I had said how much I liked this kit as a boy, and how it was now a bit hard to find at a sensible price. Well, I'm very grateful for it and now it is the subject of my build. If I have time I'll do the Dragon Ralide too, but I'm very enthusiastic about getting my mitts on this DC 9 so that's first ! Here's the really nice vintage box art: I really like the fuselage top blue in this KLM scheme I flew on one of these in 1974 from the UK to Copenhagen on the first step of a 'many hop' journey to Sydney. A number of airlines and airports were involved; Bahrain, Dahran, Singapore, Melbourne to name a few places, Thai Airlines, SAS and Qantas were some of the airlines. The DC 9 was one of the nicest aircraft on this trip, DC 8 and 10 were also involved. Thus, even though I won't be building it in the SAS markings of the one I flew in as a boy, the DC 9 holds special memories for me. Moreover, this kit does as I really enjoyed painting it as a young lad. Here are the contents, complete with Airfix Club application form - stated as 'The Coolest Club on the Planet!' The decals look to be in excellent condition: As an aside, to look more 'Civilised' in this civil group build, I splashed out on a new, big, Tamiya cutting mat from BNA Model World in Victoria. I'm down under and basically have to get everything mail order. BNA are really reliable and packed it in a nice big box to stop it getting bent, very thoughtful All I have done so far is wash the parts then detach them from the sprues; I hadn't yet detached them here: I was waiting for them to dry naturally. I got myself acquainted with the build sequence and it looks like, if all goes well, it could be quite straightforward. I hope I need a break from short-run kits, so Im hoping this is the mojo booster I need! I did look at a Hannants/Airwaves etch set for it, but it works out a little expensive with postage on its own, and I didn't want to wait (!), so decided just to have fun and go completely OOB. I know all the 'real' airliner people (I'm improvising here, its been 40 years!) will use etch doors, window decals and all sorts of things to make them look fabulous. I hope my little 'nostalgia build' will be ok. I will only deviate from OOB in that I won't be following the instructions and applying a blue decal all over the windows, then punching the windows out with a little tool that comes with the kit !! I'll be trying to mix a blue that matches the other decals and try to airbrush the stripe nicely down the fuselage. Thank you for watching Any suggestions or comments are very welcome Best regards Tony. Edited for spelling 18/7