vintage airliner - Douglas DC-3 in Trans World Airlines (TWA) colors - 7628-inspired MOC - finished 7/14/23

[Murdoch17]

Back in the day, whilst flying you could get a real turkey carved right in front of you, stretch your legs without bothering your neighbor in front of you, and take whatever you wanted on board with you... peanut butter, toothpaste, shampoo, you name it! Need the smoking section? The whole freaking plane was the smoking section!

Of course, tower radar wasn't really a thing (cockpit radar was a long way off too), flight instruments were crude, and inflight entertainment was either out your window, napping, or reading whatever book you brought with you. Crashes were also common with survivability rates poor, and there was no GPS to guide your pilot on his way.... but they did have paper maps, gut instinct, a lot of know-how and nerves of steel. (a quick silent prayer couldn't hurt either)

So, buckle those seatbelts (if your plane has any!) and steady those pre-flight jitters - we're taking off!

This 1936-designed Douglas Aircraft Company DC-3 was very heavily modified from limited edition Indiana Jones set 7628 (Peril in Peru, from the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull film) and my own imagination. I redesigned the passenger cabin of the DC-3 to not have any pesky stickers as in the 2008 set. Sadly, the airplane's opening door has been removed as a consequence of redesigning the airframe. The colors are based off Trans-World Airlines (otherwise known as TWA) back in the immediately post-WWII period. It's not a perfect match for the paint scheme, but it doesn't use stickers, so I'm happy.

The rear of the plane. Originally I wanted to build this airplane in green for Ozark Air Lines, but limited green wedge part availability killed that idea. (Ozark was headquartered at my local major airfield - St. Louis' Lambert Airport, from the early '50's until when they merged with TWA in 1986)

The two front landing gear fold up.

The roof of both cabin and cockpit come off to seat six passengers and one pilot figure.

Thoughts?

EDIT 7/14/23:

Main post updated, model finished!

Edited July 14, 2023 by Murdoch17

[Murdoch17]

I made a little golden age of aviation-era poster for the plane, featuring a homemade TWA logo. I also updated the first couple paragraphs in the first post with a bunch of new text.

Since the last time I produced pictures, I added a boomerang to the roof as a detail (I think those are supposed to be pitot tubes, but I could be wrong) and also placed the rear wheel under the revised tail-area. (You wouldn't believe how hard it was to get the plane to look landed in LDD: lots of trial and error, and angling parts!) The pilot has also been added, and he's waving at us to say that's it's nearly time to depart!

[Murdoch17]

This DC-3 passenger plane needs 213 more parts to be completed in the real world, of which 208 pieces you can see above. I also edited the engines a bit.

[Murdoch17]

The DC-3 is missing only ~35 parts to finish assembly. It is actually so low in price, I can't get it by itself with reasonable S&H. Thus, I decided to attach it to my oil  well / Nodding Donkey list to make it $22 before shipping and handling.

(For those wondering, I still have my Edna Mode modular fashion building + Herbie VW beetle to be built as well at some point. It remains to be seen which combo list will be built first, as each are about the same price as the other.)

Edited May 8, 2023 by Murdoch17

[Murdoch17]

Only 16 parts left to go on the airplane! Paycheck should be arriving to finish it sometime soon.

Sorry it's taking so long to get it done!

[Murdoch17]

The DC-3 is finally DONE!

Main post updated with new pictures and updated text!

[Powder Monkey]

Cool!
I really like the vibe of this. Can't tell what it is exactly, but for me it's better than the 7628