Ecuatoriana - Jungle jet Masterpieces

[RStretton]

Special schemes are everywhere nowadays but back in the 70s Ecuatoriana produced a fleet of special schemes which have never been rivalled! Forget 'Hello Kitty', forget Pop Stars and Pokemon JALs, forget football schemes, forget Disney Alaskas and Westjets nothing compares to the Jungle Jets.

Faced with competing against a myriad of colourful Braniff jets and the colourful Calder Colours of South America DC-8 the national airline of Ecuador produced a series of amazing schemes to emblazon their fleet of Boeing 720s and 707s with.

The fleet comprised:

Boeing 720 - HC-AZO/BDP 'The Lettuce':



Boeing 720 - HC-AZP:



Boeing 720 - HC-AZQ:



Boeing 707-320 - HC-BCT:



Boeing 707-320 - HC-BFC:


The special schemes seem to have lasted until about 1980 and the last Boeing 707-320 - HC-BHY went into the new standard scheme itself no slouch:



Even then they had one last special scheme reserved for their Cargo 707 HC-BGP - a wonderful golden variant:



Ecuatoriana took on DC-10s and A310s in the 80s but the 90s weren't kind and the 1995 VASP takeover signalled the end of the lovely schemes.

In 1:400 the airline is relatively well represented with 8 releases (though two are duplicates - and the Herpa 707 is awful) however of the Jungle Jets only HC-BFC has been made by Aeroclassics and I just picked her up from the Waffle Sale. Here she is in all her glory:

[RStretton]

C'mon Aeroclassics let's see some more of these beauties.

I also have the standard scheme example - on the rolling gears 707 mould. I prefer the non-rolling gears especially as sometimes as in this case they are tempted to roll off things and get damaged (front nose gear is a bit munted on the right):

[fleetlordatvar]

So for my only exception to the 707s was this Ecuatoriana - 1/200 of course