DRAW decals 44s-737-77: Piedmont B.737-200, reviewed by Scott Van Aken

DRAW decals 44s-737-77: Piedmont B.737-200

Livery:	Piedmont
Price	$10.00 plus shipping
Reviewer:	Scott Van Aken

Piedmont Airlines (IATA: PI, ICAO: PAI, Call sign: PIEDMONT) was a United States airline from 1948 to 1989, when it was acquired by and merged into USAir. Its headquarters were at One Piedmont Plaza in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, a building that is now part of Wake Forest University.

In April 1989, shortly before it merged into USAir, Piedmont had 22,000 employees. In September 1988 it flew to 95 airports from hubs in the eastern United States; its commuter and regional affiliates flew turboprop aircraft via code sharing agreements to 39 more airports.

While the original Piedmont is no more, the name is still being used by a commuter airline. Piedmont had bought Henson Airlines in 1983 and so when the US Air merger happened, they also had Henson. In 1993, in order to keep the Piedmont name, Henson was renamed. US Air did the same thing with two other regional airlines and the names of PSA and Allegheny.

A great source of aftermarket liveries for airliner fans is DRAW Decals. They produce decals to order and in several scales. This means they have to print the decals from their catalogue so it takes a few days longer to get your order. These are a big improvement over the old ALPS printed decals in that they are tough and not easily damaged. They still have a single carrier and would benefit from a light acrylic clear coat once the model is completed. My biggest complaint about the old decals is their lack of flexibility. Not the case with these as witnessed by a recent build using them. The instructions recommend using hot water in a cloth to help markings conform and also only recommend weak setting solutions, like Microsol. The decals come with windows so those using these will need to do a bit of extra work on their model in terms of filling in the windows.

This particular scheme was that used just before the merger of Piedmont with US Air, hence the US Air colors. The aircraft has an overall unpainted metal fuselage with Boeing grey wings, horizontal stabs, cargo doors, lower fairing between the wings, radome and the gear doors.

My sheet has a glitch in that the medium red area on one fuselage stripe is completely missing. The patch section is too small to fill this area. I contacted Draw Decals and they will be sending a corrected replacement.

July 2021

Thanks to me for the review sheet.

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