Today I finished the scratch building of the Wedgetail. The details that separate this from a normal 737 are the numerous antenna, bulges, radar domes and winglets that protrude from the fuselage. There are literally dozens of these, but at this scale they would be barely noticeable, continually break off and turn it into a little porcupine. None of which lend me towards adding them. However there are a few bits that need to be included:

• The big radar dome attached to the top of the fuselage (the most noticeable feature).
• The two winglets on the bottom rear of the fuselage.
• A small bulge on the underside of the front fuselage.
• A dome pointing out the rear of the plane, just under the rear wing.
• A bulge on the underside, just fore of the two winglets

All up that’s five different features. Each were scratch built out of various styrene strips cut up and filed to form the basic shapes. The widths I used were 1.0, 0.8 and 0.4mm so we’re talking very thin stuff. Of course at this scale it’s not so much about precise dimensions as it is giving the appearance of the features: you can scale things up a little and it will look a little out on photos, but in the flesh they look quite good. I’ll end this post with a few pictures showing the details. Next it will be the base colours.