Prototype Boeing Dreamliner 1/144

[bianfuxia]

 

 

You may have heard the bizarre story about the Mexican Government's efforts - futile thus far - to offload the presidential 787 Dreamliner. When the new President took office, he wanted to sell the luxurious plane in line with his austere image. There was even a proposed lottery to sell it (see the CNN story). So far no luck. It's an amazing plane, but no airline wants to buy it because of the huge cost of turning it back to a normal airliner. No-one else is really in need of a plane so awesome that "even Obama didn't have one", as was said at the time.

 

What's maybe even less widely known than this funny story is that the Mexican VIP jet was previously one of the 787 development prototypes - N787ZA.

 

 

 

One of the early words my daughter could say was "Dreamliner" 😆 At some point when she was 2 or 3 she volunteered to my wife that I should get a Dreamliner model for Fathers Day. I duly received the 1/144 Revell kit with this livery of the second prototype aircraft.

 

In this creative commons wikipedia image you can see the scheme - much less vibrant than the one worn by the original development aircraft.

 

The Revell kit is pretty nice but I have to admit I did a fairly basic job. The best part of the kit, I thought, was the engines. I see in the photos I have forgotten to paint in the windscreen frames. I painted the window with Tamiya "smoke" to give it a tint, mainly because I later regretted not doing anything about a cockpit. It kind of looks better IRL than in these photos.

 

 

 

It's a nice kit, if basic, and to me it looks like a Dreamliner. That aircraft has great lines, I think, and having flown long haul on them a few times (China to the US a few times among other routes) I am happy to say I will always take a Dreamliner over other types if I can. The larger windows are especially cool and I do believe the hype about reduced cabin noise and better quality cabin air. 

 

 

 

Thanks for looking!

Edited January 12, 2022 by bianfuxia

[dnl42]

That looks gorgeous! 

 

And huuuuge!

[bianfuxia]

4 minutes ago, dnl42 said:

That looks gorgeous! 

 

And huuuuge!

thanks - and yes it's massive - nearly as big as the 1/72 Victor I built recently. It's so big it won't fit on my usual display shelf, which easily accommodates a 707 in the same scale among other pretty decent-sized models.

[JMChladek]

It may be a "basic" job, but you executed it very well. Sometimes it can be more difficult to do a clean appearing model properly as opposed to a dirty one and this one looks like and clean, yet still in scale.

[bianfuxia]

1 hour ago, JMChladek said:

It may be a "basic" job, but you executed it very well. Sometimes it can be more difficult to do a clean appearing model properly as opposed to a dirty one and this one looks like and clean, yet still in scale.

Thank you! I feel like a prototype would be basically brand new in appearance so the clean look seemed right for this one.

[stevehnz]

That looks good. I'm keen to try one of these in AirNZ colours, sounds like I might need some more shelf space.

Steve.

[SAT69]

Very nicely done and many thanks for the background story.