Building the Revell Douglas DC-7C

Revell Corp. USA – 1955, Revell Deutschland – 2005
Price: 7.99 Euro/Germany

Model History

As far as I know the model dates back to 1955 and was released by Revell / USA in the US as a DC-7B in the colors of United Airlines. The date is still written inside the fuselage. Once Douglas decided to do the DC-7C with increased range, as a competitor of the Lockheed Constellation, changes in the construction were necessary. Revell tried to do the same with the model and made significant changes at the wings and the rear of the aircraft as well as a higher fin. See “Revell 1957″on the lower side of the wings, and the step in the plastic of the fuselage some millimeters ahead the elevators. Unfortunately, the only thing they decided not to change was the nose.
The last time we saw Revell’s DC-7C in the shops was in the early 90s in the colors of Swissair and in the 70s as a DC-7B with United Airlines decals.

The Plastic

There are two different options to build this model. One way is to say: Ok, I take this model as a kind of model history with some bugs and I’ll build it out of the box. The other way is to say: Ok, there are some bugs, but nevertheless I’ll try to do a proper DC-7C. (Aren’t these always the options we have even with modern models ?)

The second way means a little more work, of course. I am not an absolute perfectionist and I never saw a DC-7C in my life. But clearly, by looking at photos at airliners.net the work over of the nose and the reshape of the cockpit is mandatory. To stretch the fuselage to the right length it would have been necessary to put a plug of 8 mm ahead the wings. But I resisted.

I love open windows, not decals for windows. And if I have the choice, I’ll do so. I begun my work by rasping down the plastic at the inside of the fuselage in the windows area as long as the windows opened up themselves. That works great at these pressed-in windows Revell used on this model. After painting the inside of the fuselage in a dark color I glued the fuselage, chopped the nose and cut out the cockpit area. By using photos and some drawings I found a little piece of plastic that matched the shape of the nose in almost a perfect way. A piece of thin plastic card gave the shape of the cockpit, some new struts for the windows and a lot of filling and sanding started…
As a result of sanding a new problem was found: Because Revell used as we in Germany say “positive” rivets and panel lines, they got lost in the sanding areas. Some might sand down all surfaces because of that – I decided to accept these imperfect areas. When I see my photos now – these details make the model more an old prop– I think.

The colors

I airbrushed the model on the upper fuselage in Revell 04 „White“. The gray areas on the wings are Testor’s “Dove Grey“. Silver is a mixture of Testor’s “Metalizer “Aluminum” at the engines and Bare Metal Foil ”Chrome” and “Matt Aluminum” at the wings and the lower fuselage.

The Decals

Revell provides two Airlines: PanAm and Suedflug from Germany, a German Charter Airline that used former KLM DC-7C’s, the first time I heard of this Airline. The decals are really nice, but I think the blue of the PanAm decals is a little bit too bright. But – as said before – I never saw an original. You have to be careful using the PanAm decals. The decal for the window area looks like being one piece – but it isn’t really. The non-color areas are also non-decal areas. So after taking the decals out of the water and trying to slide them on the model you will have a kind of decal-net, almost impossible to handle with. My advice is to use “Liquid Decal Film” by Microscale to avoid this problem.

Conclusion

I just love this model. And to give it the last “kick” I bought some TT-scale (1/125) figures in a model train shop here in Berlin to put them on the air stairs provided with the model. The tractor is from the Monogram Constellation kit.