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In Formation's 1/144 Douglas DC-8 Series 20/30

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

History

In the immediate post-war era, Douglas airliners dominated the world. The DC-3 continued soldiering on, while the newer four-engined DC-4 and DC-6 aircraft quickly captured their share of the market. From this position of strength it would make sense that Douglas would step into the jet age quickly, but instead they took a slow and cautious route. This delay resulted in Boeing producing the first American jetliner, the 707, and Douglas quickly found themselves playing catch-up.

The DC-8 was announced a year after the first flight of Boeing's jetliner and the first DC-8 didn't fly until shortly before the 707 entered service with Pan Am. In an attempt to grab ahold of some of the jet sales, the DC-8 was designed to be slightly wider than the 707, allowing more space in the cabin. This appealed to many airlines, but with the early lead of the 707, many of the airlines chose the Boeing product over the Douglas. United and Delta were the two launch customers of the DC-8, although United also flew 707s.

It wasn't until the DC-8 was stretched and re-engined that it started to eat into the 707 market, but by then Boeing had turned out the 727 and 737, both of which gave airlines a wide selection of capacities and ranges. The DC-8 soon fell from passenger duties, but many can still be seen in the skies around the world carrying cargo.

The Kit

This is In Formation's third resin kit, and they have steadily improved their kit quality. The detail level on this kit is quite good, with recessed panel lines throughout, and fairly crisp molding as well. The fuselage is split into three pieces, with a separate nose and tailcone. The nose cone covers a hole where you can place extra weight. In addition to this, you might want to think about drilling out the fuselage to lighten the finished model, as the solid resin wings and fuselage will result in quite a bit of weight. The landing gear is to scale, which means it is delicate, and it might not be able to support the weight of the finished model over the years.

The horizontal and vertical tails are molded separately, so you will want to be careful in aligning everything to get the proper stance. The wings are also molded separately, and as one-piece right and left halves. The engine pylons are separate, allowing the different engine types to interchange easily. There are two types of engines, both of which are well molded. Each set includes separate front sections with the fan blades molded in. Some careful research into which DC-8 you want to build is needed, but once you determine which engines you need the rest should be pretty easy. The landing gear, as I have said earlier, is quite petite and really looks the part. The maingear features separate wheel trucks, which should help you get everything sitting on all wheels. The gear doors are suitably thin as well, resulting in a very realistic looking undercarriage.

The kit comes with no decals, but both Draw Decals and Whiskey Jack Decals have released sets designed for this kit, and with some adjusting, it is possible to adapt DC-9 or 707 decals to this kit.

Conclusion

This is a very welcome addition to the airliner modeling world, as the off-scale Revell DC-8 kit isn't easy to find, or cheap for that matter. With the great number of interesting DC-8 liveries out there, here's hoping that In Formation keeps this kit in production for a long, long time.

My thanks to In Formation for the review sample. For more information about this kit, and other In Formation kits, visit their website.