Skyline 1/144 737-300/400/500 Kit First Look

By Fotios Rouch

First Look

The Boeing 737 is so well known to all that use commercial aviation for their domestic transportation that it would seem redundant to go in its long history. Suffice it to say that the Pratt & Whitney turbojet variants are pretty much all retired by now and that all of the 737s active today are powered by CFM turbofans. You probably have started seeing also the later longer variants with wing tip winglets. This aircraft is here to stay with a lot more advanced variants to come.

The Skyline Models 737 family is comprised of the -300, -400, and -500 variants. They share common parts with the main difference being the fuselage lengths.

This is an exquisite effort and a very valuable addition for the airline modelers' collections. This is a labor of love and not the product of a big multinational company. The attention to detail is amazing and these models should easily make for show winning entries. I snatched all three kits from the DACO booth at the 2006 IPMS/USA National Convention not only because they are great kits but to support in my small way the efforts of this man in the hopes of seeing more brilliant kits in the future.

Laying out the fuselage sprues one can see the differences in length between the variants. The dash number should not be associated with a fuselage incremental length and so the -400 is longer than the -300 and the -500 is the shortest fuselage. All the sprues offer the wingtip winglets but very few companies have started retrofitting their fleets with these fuel saving alterations.

The parts are very well molded and the modeler has the option to cut open the front of the fuselage and replace the solid cockpit windscreen with a clear one. Similarly the cabin windows can be opened up but I cannot see the how the modeler can ensure that they are perfectly drilled out and filled with a clear agent.

The wing sprue is the same for all the variants. A nice touch is that small clear wingtip lenses are provided and I am sure they will do a lot for the look of the model.

The turbofans are done in six parts and they look very well done.

The clear parts are very transparent and include four positional lights and strobes as well as landing lights.

The instructions are very clear and include photos of the real aircraft to help illustrate details. The decals are very nicely done and they include absolutely everything you can imagine. Make sure that you have detailed references you need for the specific livery you are planning to model.

This family of kits is very much recommended to all the airline modelers. I sure hope that modelers realize how much value is in these kits and vote accordingly with their wallets.