Throughout the history of aviation there have been watershed events and aircraft that have marked certain benchmarks in time. Obviously the first of these was the Wright Flying in 1903. Other important aircraft include DC-3, the Supermarine S-6 which would lead to the Spitfire, the Me-262, and Concord. The Boeing 707 was another such aircraft. Although beaten out of the starting gate by the de Havilland Comet as the first commercial jet airliner, the 707 quickly caught up and surpassed the Comet (aided by the Comet’s untimely grounding amongst other things) to become the premier jet airliner of the late 1950s and the 1960s. The 707 since its first flight in 1954 has served in all parts of the world, with numerous airlines and air forces. It is still in wide spread service today and looks to continue for some time.

Canada was not left alone by the 707 experience. A number of Canadian operators flew the 707, as did the Air Force. One such airline was Calgary based Pacific Western Airlines. PWA acquired its first jet in the form of the 707 in 1967, and the type remained in service with the airline until 1980. During that period, the jet carried thousands of passengers and hauled tons for cargo to destinations too numerous recount here. It was one of these jet airliners that I chose to model, and the kit I would use was the 1/144 scale Minicraft Boeing 707-320.

On opening the box one finds the usual quality Minicraft airliner kit. The parts come molded in grey styrene with recessed panel lines, no window openings, an oversized cockpit window section, and a choice of exhaust sections for the four engines (clearing allowing the company to market more than one variant by only changing the decal sheet, which they have done). The decals provided in the kit are for a Pan American aircraft and include as part of the paint scheme window decals.

Now Minicraft has been noted for an inconsistency in the quality of their airliner kits, by myself included. Some like the little DC-3 are quite superb, as is the MD-80 I am told. Others like the DC-6 and Lockheed Constellation are abysmal. The 707 falls in the middle of this spectrum, a little better than halfway toward the good side. The panel lines are recessed thankfully and the shape is generally correct, but the fit left a little to be desired. In previous articles about building airlines I have stated that whenever possible one should leave off some of the smaller bits like the engines, horizontal stabilizers, and antennas until after the painting is done. This was not possible with this kit because of both its design and the filling required.

I built the kit as per the instructions doing nothing out of the ordinary. Weight was added to the nose, as I usually do, though it turned out to be insufficient and more was needed once I put the landing gear on. Once the fuselage and wings were put together, the fit problems started. The pieces of the kit are not sharply molded, meaning parts that should have a 90° corner have in fact a rounded edge. This leads either to a gap or an oversized panel that either way needs the attention of some putty. This was the case with the engines. The joint between the engine casing and the pylon was like this and needed to be filled in.

While I am on the subject of the pylon, on the aircraft, and hence the model, the leading edge of the pylon wraps over the leading edge of the wing. Minicraft achieved this look by molding part of the pylon on the top portion of the wing leading edge, which is not uncommon and makes some sense. The only problem is that whole issue of not molding the parts sharply. When the two parts are put together, a huge gap results, which I can only imagine is supposed to pass for a panel line. It could actually pass for another engine intake it’s so bad. Because of the size of this gap, I chose to use melted plastic as a filler. I cut up tiny pieces of sprue and then melted them with liquid glue until I had a paste that I could apply to the gap. This method does work well because in the end the hole if filled with the same plastic as the rest of the model, though the process take a long time because the sprue bits don’t melt quickly which is why I wouldn’t use it too often or on a large area. Furthermore the more liquid glue you use, the softer the plastic gets, which thereby increases the curing time. I had to leave my kit alone for several days before I could touch it again.

The other parts I was forced to put on prior to painting were the horizontal stabilizers and the ubiquitous HF probe atop the tail. The stabilizers on jet airliners are by and large a fully moving flight controls, with the whole assembly pivoting up and down. This is why leaving it off during construction is not usually a problem because it should clearly be seen as a separate piece on the finished kit, being mindful not to leave a gap you park a truck in of course. With the Minicraft kit, however, this is not possible because the root of the stabilizer is molded on the fuselage, and again not molded crisply. Leaving this part off would result in a somewhat large seam/gap in the wrong place. As for the HF antenna, the kit is designed so that this piece is simply butt joined to the top of the vertical stabilizer, a proposition that would clearly end with the antenna breaking off. A receiving hold needed to be drilled for the antenna to sit in, and then whole joint area needed to be filled and sanded to shape. I was actually quite please with myself for keep the antenna in place throughout the painting process and most of the final assembly. Notice I say most because as predicted it got knocked off and had to be replaced, twice!

The painting was a straight forward affair because there are only two major colours the scheme I was building, white upper surfaces and natural metal undersides and wings. I laid down my usual couple of base coats of flat white which were then followed by a few more coats of gloss white. This included painting over the now sanded smooth cockpit windows. Since the cabin windows were going to have to come from a decal sheet, it only made sense that cockpit windows should as well so as to be consistent in the look. When cured, I polished the white to I high gloss shine. I used my favorite silver for airliners, FloQuill Bright Silver, to paint the aluminum surfaces. The bottom portion of the fuselage was then polished up using SNJ polishing powder. This results in a good looking polished metal look, but beware that until you seal it, you can easily leave finger prints on in the silver and you may get some polishing powder on some of the other surfaces.

Pacific Western decals for the aircraft and era I wanted to modeled did not exist, so they had to be custom made. I gathered up my references and a sample kit and approached Mike Grant with the project. This he graciously did, and the result was as set of decals up to the usual Mike Grant standard. He even included the missing cabin windows which I had planned on getting from a Boeing 727 decals set. Needless to say the decals went down without any troubles. Thank you Mike. Once completed, the whole aircraft was sealed using Testors Metalizer Sealer. The sealer does not interact with decals at all, does not dullen the polished surfaces appreciably, and protects the overall finish.

So now I have another addition to my flight line of airliners, and first of three planned Boeing 707s that I wish to build. It is nice to see such an important and widely used airliner in model form again. There are many possible decal sets and paint schemes for the 707 so the kit will be of use to many modelers. The Minicraft kit will build up into a good looking jet, but it is not for first-timers. The kit is not an abomination, but it does take some work. In my book it gets a B-.