The Aircraft

Boeing’s 737-700, -8MAX and -800 are medium sized “single aisle” jet airliners. They are easily identifiable by their single winglets, which first appeared on the -700. Later 737s have a double winglet.

I chose the 737-800 because it’s the variant used by QANTAS, which I flew from Melbourne to Cairns Australia in the spring of 2019.

The Scale Aircraft Conversions Set

You get two sets of gear parts in this set. This could be useful if you decide you also want to do a -800 or even a -8MAX. The parts are all white metal, and they fit nicely in place of the kit parts.

Painting

In this case, all of the gear legs were white. Easy to paint. There are a couple of hydraulic shock absorbers which are silver. Also easy.

Assembly

Once I got the aircraft to the point where I could put the gear on, I stopped and put the decals in place. I have found that if I try to put the decals on after I install the gear, engines, antennas and other small parts, I will need to fix at least one or two of these, because putting decals on requires extreme concentration, and the hands will hit something fragile. The nose gear parts went together nicely, the wheels fit right on, and it was a clean install. I had some trouble with the main gear parts. Where Zvezda has two parts at the bottom of the main gear, SAC has one. There aren’t any instructions in the SAC kit, and the Zvezda instructions aren’t the clearest either. But I figured it out. Once I got the gear installed, all I had to do was the gear doors, and the project was done.

Overall Evaluation

Very highly recommended. The SAC metal parts are much more robust than the kit parts, and more immune to problems caused by handling the kit after construction and during movement or display.

Thanks to Scale Aircraft Conversions for providing the aftermarket parts and IPMS/USA for giving me a chance to use them on a personal memory.