The Little World

Airliner windows are a nervous part of model building for me – at least in 1:72 scale. You see, it is too small to make them easy to handle and too big to get away with decals or painted dots.

The first time I tried putting individual plastic panes in was on a Northrop Delta passenger plane and they look like something that was done by Pa Kettle. Drunk. My next Delta has just as many but I have learned long since how to deal with PVA glue and rectangular panes. If they must be pressed in from the outside I can keep them from falling into the fuselage and if they need to come from the inside out I can do it so they do not protrude like frog’s eyes.

The trick that worked best with the Twin Otter was to carefully clean all scraps of PVA and paint from the cutouts using a half-Hollenback dental carver, and then sand the edges of the dinky little clear styrene windows so there were no sprue pips. I captured each on on a bamboo skewer with a dot of Blu-Tak and then wiped the window frame with Mr, Hobby cement. Once the window was seated, I twisted the skewer to disengage it  – and the windows were sealed in for good.

To avoid fogging them when the interior grey paint was resprayed, I masked the line with a single piece of masking tape – it gives the impression of an interior design feature when seen through the opposite side.

I think that one could also achieve good windows with Micro Kristal Klear PVA but it would depend upon the sheer area of each opening. One day I will try the trick of running a clear piece of tape against the inside of the fuselage to form a seal on the openings and then pour in Micro Kristal Klear to each aperture. This would not allow me to mask the outside, though…

Like I said, multiple airline windows are a multiple pane in the glass.