I fell in love with Douglas’ little twin while watching Ansett and TAA -9s rocket out of Brisbane’s Eagle Farm Airport with my dad in late-1970s Australia.
Airfix’s 1/144 scale kit has been a good option for many years, but it’s an old mold and not without problems. So I was thrilled to get my mitts on this all-new kit from Czech manufacturer AZ Models. The mold originated as a Fly Models kit and, like the Airfix kit, represents a Series 30 aircraft.
Molded in white plastic, the parts feature sharply engraved panel lines. AZ includes the fuselage lobe crease that is noticeably absent from the Airfix kit. The mold makers have also captured the characteristic look of the DC-9’s nose.
No clear parts are included; windshield and cabin windows are represented by decals. The windshield is engraved, but the cabin windows are not so there won’t be any issues aligning the kit or aftermarket decals. The landing gear is nice for the scale, with detailed wheel hubs and open oleo scissors. A small fret provides photoetched-metal blade antennas.
Well-printed decals give markings for two carriers, Swissair and Yugoslav Airlines.
No locators are included to align the major parts, and the tabs for the wings, horizontal stabilizers, and engines are tiny, so care must be taken during construction.
Be sure to add weight to the nose before closing the fuselage; the instructions mention it but don’t give any indication of how much is necessary. I secured several lead sinkers with J-B Weld. Holding the fuselage together and gluing a section at a time helped align the parts, and I needed just a little super glue in a couple spots.
The two-part wings have separate flap-actuator fairings and underwing fences, but the trailing edge is very thick. All but one of the protrusions rear of the wing tips in my kit were broken in the box, but they were easily replaced with styrene rod.
The engine’s halves sandwich detailed front and rear fans, but the locations are a little vague. I used slow-setting liquid cement so I could adjust the parts as they dried. I left the wings, stabilizers, and engines off for painting.
After airbrushing natural-metal areas with shades of Alclad II, and the upper fuselage with Tamiya white primer, I applied a clear coat.
The decals are very thin and lift quickly in water. Unfortunately, the JAT cheat lines are a tad too long; I trimmed them at the front doors to get the nose taper right. The blue field on each side of vertical tail is one piece and needed Micro Sol to conform, and paint touch-up with a custom mix. The instructions don’t mention that the leading edge of the vertical tail should be metal. I handpainted mine Model Master chrome silver and added Bare-Metal Foil to the wing and horizontal stabilizers.
I attached the wings, engines, and tails with 5-minute epoxy to compensate for the tiny locating tabs. The wings fit well, but the stabilizers were difficult to set with a few degrees of anhedral.
The gear is a little fiddly — the axles are short — but once on, they really look the part. The finished model looks spot-on for a DC-9, and scales out very close to published dimensions. While not a kit for beginners, AZ Model’s DC-9 is simple enough for most modelers and nice enough to build more than one. Now, where did I put those TAA decals?