Airfix B737-200 Air Zimbabwe

[Whirly]

Hello, I'm glad to join this group with a build I have too long postponed. I saw the real subject, one of the last -200 in passenger service, during a wonderful trip to Victoria Falls for my tenth wedding anniversary. I well remember the contrast of this beauty with a modern BA A320 parked nearby: shiny metal wings and lower fuselage, the loud hiss of the turbojets, something I hadn't seen for years in european airports.  Back to my home I immediately started searching for a decal sheet and I found a nearly suitable one in the Classic Airlines range: a few mail exchanges with Nick Webb later I had in my hands just the right decals, I only needed a decent kit to make justice but this proved quite a task. Over the years I accumulated the Airfix kit, Authentic Airliners ADV engines and a replacement nose I made myself duplicating the very good nose of the DACO kit. This GB came just at the right time to push me doing this model, so here are the raw materials:

 

 

 

 

 

And this is the real plane, in all its shining glory!

Thanks for looking

Fabio

 

Edited February 2, 2018 by Whirly

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Interesting and colorful choice 👍

[Graeme H]

This will be good like the idea of the Daco nose

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Nice you could join us Fabio, looks like there will be plenty of Airfix builds!

[Mr B]

NIce one.....love the African operators some very colorful schemes......

 

will be tracking this.......

 

rgds

[feoffee2]

Nice to see something different.

Thanks 

[Viking]

Now that is a nice an unusual scheme!

[jean]

Great choice! I have had many a flight on these vintage 737s, and I wish I had been more aware at the time, how special it was to fly on a dying breed...
About 10 years ago, when aircraft maintenance took a plunge in the country, a few inflight mishaps happened, and the airline motto "A tradition of caring" became, thanks to all of us nasties, "A tradition of scaring"... No comment!

 

One more thing, on the decal sheet, the name of the plane should be "Mbuya Nehanda", and not "Mebuya Nehanda". I give lessons in nitpicking in my spare time. Others build model kits.

 

Have a lot of fun!

JR

 

[Grandboof]

This will be one colourful 737 

Martin H

[Spad]

This will look nice when it's done - be watching this with interest, especially the Daco nose trick!

 

[Whirly]

On 3/2/2018 at 7:53 PM, jean said:

One more thing, on the decal sheet, the name of the plane should be "Mbuya Nehanda", and not "Mebuya Nehanda". I give lessons in nitpicking in my spare time. Others build model kits.

 

Actually the mistake is only in the instructions, the decals are correct. Feel free to comment whenever you want, being nitpicking is the ABC of building great models

 

 

On 2/2/2018 at 11:47 PM, Romeo Alpha Yankee said:

Nice you could join us Fabio, looks like there will be plenty of Airfix builds!

 

Oh yes, I was expecting a tide of Zvezda -800 builds, but the old Airfix Classic is still very appreciated.

 

[Whirly]

I found some more useful decals for this build, both from Authentic Airliners. First a sheet of photorealistic windows...

 

 

and then a really innovative idea, the wing vortex generators rendered as very small drops of resin on decal film, something like the resin rivet details from Archer Products.

Aaargh, I see now that I photographed the wrong sheet for the 737! I grant you I have also the right one though.

Hope to experiment soon this fine products.

 

 

[Whirly]

And now some small progress. I started by deleting the side windows with my preferred method, that is by covering the holes with sellotape, punching all the corners with a mini drill to let the air some escape....

 

 

... and then pouring a thin layer of resin from the inside.

 

 

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

I like the method of filling windows Whirly, I usually run the cellotape and then dribble thick CA into the windows. I do have issues with bubbles, might try this method next time next time.

 

What resin do your use?

[Abandoned Project]

Great choice of 737 livery\aircraft! 

Permission to copy your window filling method? 

[pinky coffeeboat]

Also, requesting permission here to copy your window filling method. I'm fed up with window outlines sinking in days later.

Love the colour scheme too. How well did the resin copy of the Daco nose fit the Airfix kit?

 

Jeff 

[Whirly]

14 hours ago, Romeo Alpha Yankee said:

I like the method of filling windows Whirly, I usually run the cellotape and then dribble thick CA into the windows. I do have issues with bubbles, might try this method next time next time.

 

What resin do your use?

I tried this method but was not very successful: pure superglue cures too hard for subsequent sanding, so I experimented the trick of adding baking soda as a filler. At first it seemed to get very good results, then a few weeks later I started seeing bubbles growing from the surface, luckily I hadn't applied any decals yet. I discovered that this mixture is highly hygroscopic and can give many surprises if the mass is not completely hardened in all its parts. I find my current method much less risky even if a little more time consuming, by the way I use regular polyurethane resin.

8 hours ago, dadofthree said:

Great choice of 737 livery\aircraft! 

Permission to copy your window filling method? 

Glad you find it as attracting! Any trick shown here is "open source" so you are welcome to use it at your will. In all truth I'm not really sure I haven't copied it myself from someone other many moons ago...

10 minutes ago, pinky coffeeboat said:

Also, requesting permission here to copy your window filling method. I'm fed up with window outlines sinking in days later.

Love the colour scheme too. How well did the resin copy of the Daco nose fit the Airfix kit?

 

Jeff 

Actually this is the first experiment with the resin nose: I measured as much as I could to check for any glaring differences in fuselage section and I was satisfied enough to proceed with casting the copy.

I wanted also to complete the "tutorial" with some more images which Flickr didn't like to upload yesterday.

Here you can see the result after curing and removing the sellotape: you will be left with a sticky surface because the tape glue reacts somewhat with the resin surface but it can be mostly removed wiping with some denatured alcohol.

 

 

After that the surface is still quite troubled, but a quick coat with Mr.Surfacer will remedy everyting.

 

 

So, here you are: a finely smooth fuselage with just a little hint of the windows depressions to guide you in decal application.

Thanks for looking!

 

 

[Whirly]

Hello, finally a new update! Work has been quite slow because I wanted to clear the table from another delayed build and this week I'm on holiday with the family.

I started to treat the main wheel-well which is quite minimalist in the Airfix kit.

 

I built up a boxy approximation, close enough for my needs.

 

I remembered to do something for the APU exhaust adding a plastic wall and painting everything black.

 

 

The resin nose copied from the Skyline kit was carefully cleaned to obtain a mounting plug for the Airfix fuselage...

 

 

...where in the meantime some surgery happened.

 

 

And here is the end result. No big steps seen from the side...

 

 

some sanding needed to get a smooth joint on the right side. The Airfix fuselage is clearly not symmetrical (at least in my kit) and perhaps I should have invested some time in forcing a better match with the resin section. Oh well, next time...

 

 

When I'll be back home some serious sanding will happen, stay tuned!

 

[Graeme H]

Like what you are doing, a little work to blend in the nose and all will be good I think

[Whirly]

Thank you Graeme!

Some more progress: the wings have been slightly modified to make room for the scratchbuilt gear bay.

 

 

Then some careful alignment was done before glueing the main and tailpanes. The resin nose is now smooth and fine, no real deal to adapt the shape.

 

 

 

Putty was liberally applied and I started assembling the Authentic Airliners engines (front and rear). They don't fit very well, hope I won't loose too many details in the process.

Thanks for looking!

 

 

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Looking good Whirly. I am thinking I should have chucked a main wheel well into mine as well. Maybe I'll do it for the next one

[Mr B]

Really nice progress

 

hope to see some paint on soon

 

rgds

[Whirly]

18 hours ago, Romeo Alpha Yankee said:

Looking good Whirly. I am thinking I should have chucked a main wheel well into mine as well. Maybe I'll do it for the next one

Actually I invested no more than 30 minutes in the whole process and I'm not specially skilled: you should give it a try!

7 hours ago, Mr B said:

hope to see some paint on soon

 

Thank you Mr B, me too!  

[Whirly]

Slowly taking shape...

 

 

The Authentic Airliners engines are very accurate and rich in details but unfortunately they suffer from being part of the full resin kit also sold by AA: they aren't a straight replacement for the Airfix parts and need adapting to the wings with much sanding, filing and fitting. In the end I could get a quite good result but there's still much work to do with Milliput recontouring the joint, using regular putty would mean loosing all these fine details.

[Whirly]

Hello, longtime since my last update...here below the reasons  

I was just finishing the last joints....

 

When my eyes caught something not right:

 

Needless to say I couldn't live with such a gross mistake, so in the past few days I have sawn off the exhausts, reattached them on the right sides, filled, sanded, filled, sanded until satisfied (or fed up) and yesterday evening I applied a coat of primer. Will see what came out.