Boeing 777-200

by Dan Lee

Hasegawa's 1/200 scale Boeing 777-200 is available online from Squadron

The Boeing 777 was designed to fill the airliner gap between its 747 and 767 product lines. It was meant to replace the aging DC-10 and L1011 fleets and to compete with the McDonnell Douglas MD-11 and Airbus A340/330. These were already in development when Boeing started on the 777 project.

The 777 followed after the development of the 747-400 and as a result employed the latest technological advances at that time. A two crew cockpit, LCD displays, digital data buses, and composite structures just to name a few. The 777 was also Boeing’s first airliner to employ digital fly-by-wire for all control surfaces.

First flight was on June 20 1994. And at the time, it was the largest twin engine passenger aircraft in the world. Today that title goes to its stretched version, the 777-300. The –300 variant is intended to replace the early 747-100/200s. Development of the 777 was an international project with customers having input during the entire development cycle.

The plane is powered by either the Pratt & Whitney PW4000, General Electric GE90 or Rolls-Royce Trent 800.

From its original offering (-200), a total of five variants are offered ( -200, -200ER, -300, -200LR, -300ER). As of July 2003 there have been 622 orders and 443 deliveries covering all variants.

The 777-200 is of particular interest to me, since I was at Allied Signal Aerospace in Toronto, Canada during the development of the pneumatic control system for the aircraft.

This one of Hasegawa’s many releases of its 777-200 kit and was purchased for $26CDN.

The kit decals are for Japan Airlines, with individual aircraft named after particular constellations. The kit features recessed panel lines, openings for passenger windows, a clear cockpit windshield, and display stand. Engines are the Pratt & Whitney variety.

The kit went together without any major problems. A bit of filler was required on the left wing root and around the engine nacelle intake lips which weren’t cleanly molded on my copy.

Construction started with the fuselage. The provided nose weight ballast was installed which consisted of machine screw being screwed into the cockpit bulkhead. The interior was sprayed flat black. Passenger windows are depicted by holes which for some reason I prefer; instead of window decals. Window counters will need to fill in the appropriate windows for the particular airline they are modelling or use window decals.

With the fuselage halves glued, a slight peak is noticeable along the join line for both top and bottom joints. Sanding is required to eliminate this artifact. All antennas were removed and replaced with thinner parts made from 10 thou plastic card. Provision is provided for the builder to mount the aircraft on a display stand. A hole must be opened in the fuselage and the stand mounting plug installed to use the display stand.

The wings were assembled next which consist of upper/lower halves. A nice feature about the wings are that the under wing fairings are all separate and were left off until after everything was painted. This makes masking and painting the underside corrogard panels painless.

I decided to glue the wings to the fuselage before any painting since test fitting revealed a slight gap/ mismatch on the forward left fuselage/wing joint. Here putty was used to fix the problem. Otherwise you could paint the wings and fuselage separately and join them afterwards.

The engine nacelle fan discs require painting before they are installed between the nacelle halves. Testors steel for the fan blades and Tamiya Semi-gloss black for the hub were used. The interior ducting was painted Testors steel enamel which turned out to look metallic grey. New engine vanes were made with 10thou plastic card. The engine hot sections were left off until painting was done.

The main landing gears are molded to fit either the left or right gear bays. As such they have mounting holes for the main gear doors on both sides of the struts. However the struts are quite thin and the holes quite large. Therefore I decided to fill the extra holes in with stretches spruce and have mounting posts for the gear doors.

All the gear doors are overly thick. The main landing gear doors were sanded thinner. Nose doors and auxiliary main landing gear doors were replaced with thinner ones made from plastic card.

The engines, horizontal stabilizers, and landing gear were left off during the painting session.

Long ago I decided that the JAL scheme was too boring. It was the Korean Air decals from Flying Colors that caught my attention and became the target scheme for this kit.

Paint

Wings were paint first. Gunze Sanyo H338 Light Grey was used for the wings and horizontal stabilizers. Tamiya neutral grey was used for the corrogard on the wings.

Gunze Sanyo H45 Light Blue mixed with white was then used for the upper fuselage. The blue was then masked off and Tamiya White was used for the lower fuselage. During painting of the fuselage, the wings were masked to prevent any overspray from contaminating the wing’s finish.

I found that painting the engine pylons light grey and then masking the pylon and painting the nacelle white the easiest sequence.

The leading edges for the wings and horizontal stabilizers were masked off and Testors silver was then sprayed.

Testor's Metallizer Exhaust and burnt metal was used to for the engine hot section. Once all engine nacelle parts were painted, all parts were superglued.

Future was applied prior to decal application.

The cockpit windshield, landing gear, landing gear doors and engines were installed as the last step prior to decal application.

Decals

The Korean Air, Flying Colors decals ($10.95CDN) cover both 777-200 and 777-300 variants that Korean Air fly. Registration numbers are provided for HL7526,7530,7531 for 777-200s and HL7532-7534 for 777-300s. The default registration number is HL7533.

There are two challenges with the decals; the silver band and the fin airline emblem. The silver band along the fuselage consisted of two segments per side. Plenty of Mircoscale Micro Sol setting solution and time was required to soften the decals to get them to conform to the complex curves at the nose and the rear fuselage. The end result is that the silver band looks like it was painted on. One hicup was the silver bands needs a cut out over the wing. Otherwise the decal spills onto the wing which happened to me; such is life.

The circular fin emblem sits on top of the rudder hinge line which is quite deep. The port side also has three lumps for the rudder trim tab actuators which adds a further complex surface for which the decal must conform against. Again Micro Sol solution and time was required to get the decal to sit down. However I did manage to get the decals to crack along the rudder hinge line; looked like more time with Micro Sol was required unfortunately.

The final hiccup was with the registration number. To make any aircraft other than default 7533, the last digit ‘3’ must be cut off and the desired digit selected from the spare numbers. However the font size for the spare numbers is slightly smaller than that of the default. This is quite noticeable on the nose door numbers and slightly noticeable on the fin numbers.

There was plenty of silver decal left which I used for the cockpit framing.

Otherwise the decals were great to work with and are highly recommended.

Hasegawa’s 777 was a simple and easy kit to put together. The Korean Air is definitely one of the more colorful and easier paint schemes for the B777. Highly recommended as an diversion from your normal subjects.

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

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Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2003 by Dan Lee
Page Created 08 September, 2003
Last Updated 17 March, 2004

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