EASTERN AIR LINES DOUGLAS DC3
Entex 1/100
The DC3 needs no introduction it is probably the most ubiquitous and famous aircraft ever built. The amazing thing about it is that when you start looking into it, the fame and legend is often outstripped by the facts! For example, the aircraft that this is a model of hangs from the ceiling at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum: it is a plane that served with Eastern Airlines from 1937 until 1952, logging an incredible 56,782 hours! That's sixandahalf years of nonstop flying. The DC3 is a stately and graceful plane to look at, on the ground or in the air, and it wore many colorful and beautiful schemes.
To my eye this is one of the best: perfectly suited to the shape of the plane, and artful and balanced in its own right. This scheme was to lend itself in a number of variations to many aircraft for many years the "Great Silver Fleet," the "Golden Falcons" and others. The beautiful decal sheet was made by ATP, and the kit itself is the Entex/Nitto 1/100 scale kit not perfect in shape, but one of my favorites. This model was finished mostly in plane kitchen foil applied with Microscale foil adhesive a sort of "white glue contact cement= " that brushed, rolls or sprays on to the back surface of your foil and dries to clear in 2 or 3 minutes. If you didn't get it on too thick, you can then simply apply the foil and rub down and burnish and it will show your surface detail like a coat of paint! So prepare the surface carefully. Certain areas, like around the engines, were finished in Bare Metal foil, both for its increased elasticity, and its slight yellow tinge, which to my eye reproduces heat discoloration nicely. When finished, I polished the foil with Bare Metal Plastic Polish to bring out a deep shine. Decals went on and stayed on with no problems. I cut through the window openings in the decal cheat line to open them up, and then applied a strip of clear decal film over the entire row and strengthened it with Future Floor wax when dry. No clear coat of any kind was used anywhere else on the model.
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