[email protected] - 1:144 MDD DC-9-16; Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airlines, late 70s

[Dizzyfugu]

Upcoming project, and as a benchmark/inspiration/conversational piece a home-brew profile of it:


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

Yes, it's a FLY Models kit, but not the one I recently purchased - there are more in The Stash™... 

Stay tuned for more

[PR19_Kit]

Magic idea Thomas, that'd go down a storm on the Airliners SIG stand.

And I bet no-one would question it either. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Inspired by leftover railway decals... 

[Dizzyfugu]

The kit and its assembly:
This almost standard Douglas DC-9-10 in a fictional airline's livery was actually inspired by leftover decals from my Airbus A318 build for a fictional Scottish airline a while ago. In search of a red Scottish lion for the fin I had acquired a H0 scale Microscale decal set for diesel locomotives, namely for Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Railways engines. A lot of decals, esp. the company's name tags, were left over, and I wondered if I could design an airline for this rather remote Canadian region on the basis of the leftover sheet?

It had to be a jet airliner, though, and I settled for the smallest DC-9 variant in the form of the FLY Models kit (also available as a re-boxing from AZ Models, Karaya, Sabre Kits, and TwoSix Decals offers it with special markings, too). The kit is a DC-9-15 but somehow lacked the resin parts – but these could be easily replaced with scratched styrene bits. The model was – most unusual for me – built OOB, except for a ventral display holder for flight scenes. Fit was/is so-so, requiring some PSR. The only fictional about the "hardware" is my Series 16 variant, which never existed but adds more powerful engines from later Series 30 DC-9 to the original short airframe (outwardly not recognizable, though).


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[PR19_Kit]

Nothing quite like 'new' DC9 variants. 

Love it. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Currently waiting for some extra decals I ordered for this one, but in tzhe meantime I had an idea for another whiffy DC-9 based on the Fly Models kit - with some bigger hardware mods, though. 

[PR19_Kit]

Better and better, the DC9 lends itself so well to Whiffing. See both of my 'extreme' Nines! 

[Dizzyfugu]

An update from the early painting stages! Designing an airline livery from scratch with just some yellow taglines (originally intended for an all-black diesel locomotive) as basis was not as easy as it seems. I created several profiles to test layouts and color combinations, vaguely inspired by the early DC-9 TWA livery, and I egventually settled upon the design above. For a good contrast to the yellow font I settled for a dark green upper hull, but this created the next challenge: finding something that was not too dark and would not appear like an Aer Lingus lookalike, but also not too light or bright so that the contrast with the yellow details would still be high.
Finding the right shade of green turned out to be a loooong and somewhat winding journey. I ruled out rather bluish tones and had with Humbrol 172 (Satin Green) a good and lush compromise, but that tone had a much too murky/camouflage look, not suited for a civil airliner!
I was not able to find a suitable OEM tone, not even a RAL tone from a rattle can as a fall-back option, so I started with mixing experiments and ended up with a 1:1 mix of Revell 361 (RAL 6025 Farngrün) and Humbrol 3 (Brunswick Green): a deep/rich tone, with a yellowish hue, but neither too intense/bright nor too dark. When I painted the model, the green still conveyed a massive Aer Lingus vibe, but it became better when the white and yellow trim was added.


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

As a typical Seventies DC-9 the undersides of fuselage, wings and the engine pods became bare metal (RAL 9006, Weißaluminium, from a rattle can), with thin black lines marking walking areas on the wings' upper surfaces. The silver tone was applied first, and partlky masked to avoid spray clouds on the upper surfaces and the fin. Then came the mixed green tone, with hope that it would not end up too cloudy and uneven.


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[Dizzyfugu]

Another update! 

To separate the green from the NMF belly I gave the aircraft a wide white cheatline under the windows, created mostly with generic decal stripes (TL Modellbau) and painted free-handedly with a brush around the engine attachment points. An additional thin yellow cheatline at its base stretches the aircraft visually and repeat's the font's tone - and this eventually reduced the Irish vibe.


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

For the retro look I painted the radome in pale grey (Revell 371, RAL 7035) with a small black tip, and I added markings in fluorescent orange on wing and stabilizer tips, a nice color contrast to the yellow and green.

Another design problem that popped up was the fin's design – I needed some kind of logo or icon, and it was supposed to better match the other colors on the aircraft. This also became quite a challenge, and eventually I found some H0 scale logos/illustrations for/from Canadian grain wagons and tailored an arrow-shaped logo from that material. Not truly convincing (it looks very generic, but many airline logos do, IMHO), but a compromise "that works", even though the decals somewhat lack opacity.


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

But: we come closer to the profile!

[PR19_Kit]

Good thinking NOT to add the engines too early in the build Thomas.

I learnt that lesson after building 2-3 Airfix DC9-30s and found painting some schemes to bee almost impossible with the engines in place. 

[Dizzyfugu]

Yes, the engines are all-silver, too, so painting them as well as applying the cheatlines with decals and paint would have been a disaster. But this way it's a convenient build - even though i will add them soon, because I want to add the registration codes and want them to be parallel with the ground and not with the nacelles' centerlines, which are slightly sloped down towards the near. Looking good so far, though.

[Gondor]

Nice looking colour scheme and logo 

[Dizzyfugu]

Some news, but progress slowed down due to decals I ordered in UK still in transit.


1:144 McDonnell Douglas DC-9-16; 'Sir Richard Maitland/C-CNDB' of Cape Breton & Nova Scotia Airways (CBNS), based at Halifax Stanfield International Airport (Nova Scotia/Canada), late Seventies (What-if/FLY Models kit) - WiP by Dizzyfugu, on Flickr

[PR19_Kit]

Looking very smart and very believable too. 

[Old Wombat]

Nice!