United Airlines at Wright Field Pt1: 1960s

9/6/2018

Aeroclassics GSE sets are typically rather rare and expensive but living in Australasia they are probably slightly less sought after, though no doubt even rarer than in the USA. Recently I had the good luck to come across someone selling some GSE on a facebook sales sites from Australia and the opportunity to add a United Airlines GSE set was too good to pass up. It also gave me the chance to try it out on my Wright field diorama.

I've written about Aeroclassics GSE sets a few times. For earlier posts on this subject see:

It is July 1961 and N8002U sits on the ramp only two months out of the Douglas Long Beach factory.

Below you can see the makeup of this standalone set. In fact it is really made up of two sets. Five of the items are branded with the Mainliner shield from the 1960s, five are adorned with the Saul Bass tulip scheme whilst the rest don't have logos and can be used with either of the other two groups.

This cross-livery aspect to the set is great as it allows the collector to make dioramas fitting multiple decades and generations of aircraft. The set gave me the excuse to break out my Wright Field diorama for a photo-shoot with the new GSE.

The 1960s

I began with a selection of shots of aircraft in the 1960s Mainliner livery. United had a diverse fleet of piston engined props (DC-6s, DC-7s, Convairs), turboprops (Viscounts) and early jets (Caravelles, DC-8s, 720s) in the early 1960s.