X Scale 1/144 Boeing B707-124
By Chris Banyai-Riepl
Overview
The Boeing 707 was the company’s first jet airliner and helped launch the Jet Age of air travel. As the first of what would become a long history of airliners for Boeing, the 707 went through significant changes throughout its 20+ years of production. Early versions were quickly supplemented with longer range versions, with changes to the fuselage length, wing design, and engine types resulting in significant range and performance improvements. Because of all these changes, the 707 has been a tough subject for kit manufacturers, as there is no one popular variant and the changes between variants are different enough to make it difficult to come out with a modular version that could cover multiple variants. This is put into perspective with the excellent Ultimate Boeing 707 Guide at Airliner Cafe. This release from X Scale marks the first 1/144 kit of the 707-120 series, as the only other option, the Revell kit from the late 1950s, was 1/139 scale.
The Kit
X Scale continues to set the standard for 1/144 airliners these days, and this release of an early 707 is very welcome indeed as most kits are of the later intercontinental variants, which are very different from the first versions. The kit comes molded in a gray plastic with finely recessed panel lines, like previous releases from X Scale. The decals are nicely printed and provide markings for a single Continental Airlines aircraft in its 1959 delivery scheme.
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The assembly starts out with the cockpit, which is well detailed for this scale. The instrument panel and console are made up from three pieces, with the rear bulkhead assembly having four pieces. Both of those assemblies fit into the cockpit floor, which get five seats, highlighting how crowded these early jet airliner cockpits were back in the day. All of this detail is impressive and will look really nice painted up, at least before you put it in the fuselage. The cockpit windows will significantly reduce just how much will actually be seen, something I experienced when building the X Scale DC-8 kit. Still, it’s nice to have and you can go to town as much as you want with this interior.
Once the cockpit is done, that assembly can be fitted into the fuselage halves, and the nose gear well will be the only other insert added. The instructions don’t mention to add nose weights, and looking at the layout that’s probably fine, but just for safety’s sake I would probably add a few grams of weight, just for peace of mind. With the fuselage halves together, the next piece to add is the bottom fuselage piece that covers the wing root. This also has two separate pieces for the belly air scoops. This is an interesting departure from earlier kits, which had that center section include part of the lower wing, allowing a strong joint. This setup will likely need some extra support needed, as there is only about one millimeter of joint width, top and bottom, but that will only be known once I get it on the bench.
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Speaking of the wings, these are next, and as typical to X Scale kits, the upper and lower wings have their joints falling on spots that don’t have panel lines, so that will make some of the cleanup a bit easier in terms of rescribing. This is the same for the tailplanes, while the vertical fin is split normally. Back to the wings, these get a small insert for the wheel well and a clear lens for the wing root landing lights.
The engines are the next step, and these early 707 engines are a complex assembly. These have a basic assembly of right and left halves with a front fan and a separate intake lip. Where it gets complicated is with the back end, with the complex exhaust setup. This is replicated in ten parts, which when assembled together should provide a pretty realistic representation of the hush kit used by these early jet engines. The pylons are split into halves as well, and all those come together to make for some highly detailed engine assemblies.
The next bit is the landing gear, and this kit undoubtedly has the best 1/144 707 landing gear out there. The main gear is very well detailed, with a main strut piece and two separate retraction struts and a separate oleo scissor, along with four wheels spit into right and left halves each. All of this thrown together results in a highly detailed main wheel assembly. The nose gear strut is similarly well detailed, with a two-piece oleo and two extra detail pieces fitting onto the nose gear strut, with individual main wheels. The gear doors are similarly accurately replicated, with four pieces for each side of the main gear and a single one for the nose gear.
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The color scheme for the Continental Airlines has a classic layout, with the fuselage featuring a white crown and the rest finished in shades of natural metal. The tail is painted in gold, and there will be some careful masking needed both for the tail and the fuselage. The cheatline between the white and natural metal on the fuselage is particularly thin, needing some real careful measuring. It will definitely be a colorful scheme once finished, though, that’s for sure. Having used the X Scale decals in the past on their DC-8 kit, I know that these will work out quite well.
Conclusion
This is undoubtedly going to be a very popular kit for airliner modelers, with some colorful classic schemes out there for this early Boeing 707. Here’s hoping they continue this line and come out with other 707 variants. Visit the X Scale website for this and their other great 1/144 kits.