The Duke's First GAABSA Model Done!

[Duke Maddog]

Finally after fighting this thing for nearly a year; I can now declare this model done.


This is Academy's 1/72 scale Boeing B-377 Stratocruiser civilian airliner done in Pan American Airlines markings. This bird is the Pan Am 'Clipper Nightingale'. I chose these markings because they looked better than the alternative and not because of ease of application! Quite the opposite in fact. Here it is all complete:

Terminal-eye view:



Slightly higher angle from then rear:



Different angle again (I wanted to shoot from higher up but missed):



Final upper view:



This shot has an Exacto knife in it for size reference to show what a 'horse' this thing is!




Okay, now I feel much better having finished at least one of these. Hopefully more of them will get done soon. It isn't perfect; in fact the decals really suck wind and I had a real tough time with them. I also had to somehow add weight to the nose some more since for some reason this was quite the tail sitter.

I'll show those details about this build when I next post in the Maddog Manufacturing Thread after next weekend. For now, just check the final model out at your leisure.

Thanks for looking in, comments are welcome.

[Stikpusher]

That turned out very beautiful! IIRC, the aircraft was a modification of the basic B-29 design. The same wings and power plants mounted on a new designed larger fuselage. With that lineage, of course it's gonna be BIG!!!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Carlos! She is a pretty one in pics. She does have a few issues still that can be seen close up, but I'm happy. I did far better on the finish with this one than I did with the old DC-6. Yeah, she is a modification of the B-29. They made it into a C-97 by adding the new larger, wider fuselage for carrying more cargo. Then someone at Boeing realized that if they put seats inside and added a deck below for a bar/lounge, it would be the essence of luxury air travel. Thus was born the B-377.

[tempestjohnny]

Nice looking build and big.

[Gary Brantley]

Wow, very nice indeed Duke! Cool bird man.

[BlackSheep214]

Big and shiny! Love it!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks guys! I appreciate the compliments very much! They do keep me motivated to keep on building.

Blacksheep, she is indeed very big!

[Stuart]

That is a beautiful looking build Mark - Nice work!

[BorgR3mc0]

Those civil markings look very good!

[Duke Maddog]

Thanks Portman! She does look good on the shelf.

Thanks Borg! I did have some issues with them, but overall they went down okay. Up close, you can see where some tended to wrinkle a bit when I tried to press them flat.