210330: I have no access to white ink, so the "Jet Airlink" is printed on white decal paper with various degrees of grey background to fing a good match.
This aircraft was delivered to Northwest Express Airlines in May of 2000 and transferred to Pinnacle Airlines in 2002, flying under an Air Services Agreement with Northwest Airlines. The aeroplane was lost on a late-night repositioning flight on 14 October 2004 when the two-man crew decided to see what their empty airplane could do and pushed the envelope a bit too far. They departed controlled flight after reaching FL41 and flamed out both engines at altitude, and were barely able to recover control. Still, they were unable to re-start the engines and mismanaged their descent to landing, crashing in the dark a few miles short of their selected emergency landing field at Jefferson City, MS.
The kit is beautifully designed and molded, with clear fuselage halves and an exquisitely detailed front office. The kit includes paint masks for the windshield, cabin windows, and wheel hubs, and includes a small PE fret with antennae, landing gear doors, additional details, etc.
The kit was pretty simple and very nicely detailed, with excellent fit. The engine compressor intakes and hot sections are cast in dark resin. Undercarriage was good although I chose to build an in-flight display. The bottom wing is one piece, but I installed a spar of brass rod in both the wings and horizontal stabs to lend rigidity and to make it possible to tweak the dihedral angle. My only complaint is that the winglets are a butt-join, inherently weak. I haven't broken them off (yet).
I had to cobble some decals from various sources. Draw decals makes a set in the right livery for a 1/200 DC-9 which happens to scale close to a 1/144 CRJ, so I used that sheet for the titles and logos on the vertical stabs. The rest of the decals were printed at home (see photos for details).
Paints are WalMart rattlecan grey primer and Testors Model Master Acrylics for the livery colors.
