I'm currently building the not so great imo minicraft 757-200. The panel lines are very wide and way overdone for 1/144 scale. Would it detract from the appearance of the aircraft if I fill them all except the rudder, ailerons and flap lines? I have several kits like this such as the minicraft 727 etc.

The last thing on accuracy to worry about on the Minicraft 757 is the panel lines. Worry about the nose, the too thick wings, the wings that are not level, the tail, enigines/pylons etc. The panel lines are fine, if you are building that model.

The old guy is here! This morning I composed a very informative post on correcting the Minicraft 757 fuselage mis-alignment issues. When I tried to "Reply", it gave me a URL error message and I lost all of it.

So the short version reply. The project resumed last week after a long time away doing other modeling things. The slicing of the fuselage and twisting the nose and tail relative to the mid-section worked very well. It's taken a lot of block sanding with 320 wet-or-dry glued to a 4" long aluminum "T" section "block" to get the fuselage looking like a 757. As molded, the cross section has a flat area along the window line - definately not Boeing's idea. The twist makes that issue even more pronounced. Easy fix, just lots of sanding.

I still need to alter the area in the lower wing where the main gear doors retract - Minicraft has it upside-down. The air entry and exhaust for the two A/C packs turned our rather well, and makes a visible difference.

On to the paint booth after rescribing perhaps 30% of the panel lines. The rest will stay hidden under filler and primer.

Gerry

Pics, Pics? I can only get my text posts to work about 50% of the time, and you want photos?

It sould be obvious, but just in case, anyone contemplating a Minicraft 757 build should read Andrew Forster's build under Kit Builds in the CAFE. Excellent review.

Gerry