What are the better civil kits?

My top three airliners- Heller Constellation; Heller DC-6; Airfix Dragon Rapide, oh and the Italeri/ Testors/ Revell DC-3.  I also have an Academy B-377 that looks great, but I haven't stuck it together yet.

Revell of Germany makes very good kits and they are one of the few mfgs that do a lot of civil subjects.  I much prefer their kits to those from Eastern Europe.

The Hasegawa Citation 500, Falcon 10, and Lear 35 are a little older but they look very nice when done.  All 1/48.  I think Revell Germany reissued one or more of them recently.

Depends on what scale you're working in and how much you're prepared to pay.  In 1/144 (my chosen scale) I'd say the Minicraft DC-4 is hard to beat and the Daco Skyline Boeing 737-300/400/500 is also very good although it has a few annoying quirks and needs a fair bit of effort to get the best out of it.  If you can afford their prices the German resin manufacturer Authentic Airliners makes kits of jaw-dropping gorgeousness but they really are seriously expensive.

Minicraft's DC-8s (1/144) are very nice, as is the Minicraft Cessna 172 (1/48). Welsh Models of the UK (http://www.welshmodels.co.uk/) make some very nice 1/144 airliners, mostly vac-forms, although some of their later releases include resin wings and stabilizers.

Check out Airline Hobby Supply (http://www.airline-hobby.com/). He carries just about everything that is available, and his service is very good.

And if you're really into airliner models, I highly recommend joining the Airliner Modelling Digest, a Yahoo! group. Lots of knowledgeable and friendly people there (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/airlinermodelling)

Thanks for the info. I should have mentioned that with airliners I'm more interested in the jet era. My LHS has a fair few minicraft kit airliners but I'm a bit unsure about them. They also have a Revell citation 500. Is this any good? I'm not too worried about super detail but I don't want a kit that I have to argue with to get the parts to fit nicely.

Recently, Russian manufacturer Zvezda produced some lovely airliner kits in 1/144. At first, they released two Soviet planes: IL-86, which is fine and can be found in Revell box and Tu-154M which is great. After that, they made some amazing US airliner: 767-300ER and their newsest kit is an amazing Dreamliner

The Revell Citation 500 kit is from the Hasegawa molds.  It is in the 500-0001 to 500-0213 series with the 35,000 foot ceiling.  I haven't built one yet but have several.  Maybe I should just build one!  I certainly have enough references.  Here is 500-0046.

 

 

 

And last but not least, the coffee pot, easily within reach of the copilot such that the captain need not run short of coffee. 

 

The 1/48 Revell kits of the Citation, Falcon, and Lear are all re-pops of the Hasegawa molds, but with far better decals. The Learjet in particular comes with a couple of very nice decal options. All three are relatively easy builds, if not especially long on detail.

John, did you fly that Citation? Very nice! Gotta love the ol' tape gauges on the panel. The only jet I've flown so far was a Citation CJ-1, with the Williams engines. Such a nice airplane.

Kevin

Yes, I sold it to a construction company and flew for them for a while.  I thought the Citations were pretty good airplanes.