1/144 ARK Boeing 707-331 TWA

Gallery Article by Juergen Baumgart on Jan 18 2021

 

      

John Travolta has one, an ex-Quantas -138B-version, now I have one too, a -331-version (yes, shrinked but much more economical :-) ). It is a vintage jet, from times when airplanes were loud and smoky (and flying), Airbus was unknown, corona a beer and preparations for a trip to the moon were on the way...

The build was from an ARK-kit I got from Thomas Brückelt for a quite reasonable price.
It contained a 707 with the short fin, like the first -367-Versions. To match -331-dimensions I enlarged this, also some molding errors had to be repaired., e.g. a missing wing tip etc.  This 707-331 had turbojet-engines P&W JT4A, developed in the mid 50's as successors of the J57/JT3C: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_J75

Some recent signs of life of those engines I found here : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkvmpQUvfqk
I wonder what there still is to be investigated?

The not-to-shape original engines of the kit I didn't want to use, I used minicraft JT4 of a -321-kit instead as a base, but they also needed much conversion and filling and sanding to look like a JT4A. E.g. the inlet cones were too pointed, I drilled them out and replaced them with hot drawn and round shaped polysterene and also added the separate air intakes at the lower front of the engines.

I also tried to show off the characteristic boundary layer fences (2 rows on each upper wing, 1 row at the lower sides of the elevators) with respectively lengthened jigsaw blade pieces, which I melted into the surface with a soldering iron.

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The plastic is relatively soft, so it was ideal for sanding and filling. First I thought about making a positive mold for thermoforming a clear canopy, but in the end I decided to use the canopy decal this time. This 707 served as a testbed for some extras that I executed also on a second 707, a later -321B (still under construction) eg.:  the missing characteristic NACA-intakes (lower side of the wingtips and lower side of the fuselage coinciding with the wings leading edge) I melted in  with a shaped piece of copper sheet with an integrated handle for a grip.

The TWA-Decals of the Minicraft-kit were only useable as a base, they had to be adjusted in size and colors and there was also a missing cabin window. Corrected and printed out by myself on printable decal sheet. I re-engraved most of the surfaces because they were incorrect. The also characteristic bulges on the rear fuselage at the roots of the elevators were missing too and had to be shaped, filled and sanded (same for the minicraft-321B). That really could have been easily integrated in the molds, always a time consuming extra-effort....!

I also noticed that there was a mistake on the stars and stripes flag at the rudder :
There were 48 stars in lines, it is an airliner of the mid 60's, so I suppose it has to be 50 stars in displaced rows, change 48 to 50 was 1960 – of course that bad mistake had to be corrected ;-) !

Anyhow, this so called twin globe-TWA Design looks somehow interesting!
I choose N767TW because it's the only one I found with black door frames, most others had white frames, I didn't feel like changing that on the decals....  Apart of that, this early version had a rounded wing to fuselage connection and a kink at the wings trailing edge and an additional ventral fin at the end of the lower fuselage for reasons of flight stability. All the many wing and engine versions of the different variants of the 707 are hard to figure out, I found very helpful facts at
https://www.airlinercafe.com/page.php?id=72

Some final details at the end: air intakes, maintenance flaps and some flap gaps highlighted with a 0.1mm fineliner, antennas, pitot tubes and reverser-actuators scratched and a stand with a carbon stick and TWA memorabilia was added. 

Mountain picture background is "dent de geant" in the alpine Montblanc-region, I took this picture many years ago in a glider at about 10,000 ft. 

Juergen Baumgart

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Photos and text © by Juergen Baumgart