McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 blank illustration templates

This is it. This is the big one! Ok, technically it’s the “medium” one, but…whatever. What exactly am I talking about? Well, I finally reached the point in my McDonnell Douglas DC-9 template series where I feel like I’ve covered all of the important variants. You already know that I did the -50 and -40 versions over the past several weeks, and now I’m posting the most popular of them all: the DC-9-30.

To be honest I think that this is the variant that people were asking for when they requested me to do the DC-9 series. After all, there were 662 of these airplanes sold to airlines all over the world between the years of 1967 and 1982. That’s 60% of the overall DC-9 production, which is absolutely huge.

McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 side view templates

One of the really nice things about doing a large aircraft series such as this is that creating all the variants isn’t so difficult. These DC-9-30 illustrations aren’t all that much different than the DC-9-40 illustrations that I posted two weeks ago. Yes, there are some differences of course, which I’ll go over later. But for now, here are the templates:

Just as I do with nearly every aircraft illustration that I create, I was surprised to learn that the DC-9-30 isn’t that much shorter than the -40. I thought that they were be tons of visual differences between the two, but there actually isn’t all that much. Speaking of which…

A brief history of the DC-9-30

Launched in 1967 to compete directly with the Boeing 737-100, the McDonnell Douglas DC-9-30 went on to become one of the best selling aircraft types ever. The very first one went to Eastern Airlines, and as a matter fact, that’s the livery that I imagine when I think of this aircraft. Both Eastern Airlines and the DC-9-30 were a bit before my time, but still – somehow that combination has been burned into my brain permanently.

To explain it in the briefest way possible, the -30 series was a significantly larger version of the -20 series which preceded it. McDonnell Douglas was smart to recognize the success they were having with the DC-9, and worked hard to improve it as best they could to compete with the runway success of the Boeing 737.

What are all the visual differences between the DC-9-30 and the DC-9-20?

I didn’t realize it before doing these illustrations, but there are quite a few significant visual differences between these two variants. I went into these illustrations thinking that the -30 was simply stretch of its predecessors, but I learned a thing or two. More specifically:

• The -30 is 14 ft 9 in (4.50 m) longer than the -20
• The wingspan was increased by 3 ft (0.9 m)
• The wings featured full span edge slats
• Overall wingspan was increased to 93 ft 3.6in (28.44m)

As you can see, the -30 was a lot more than just a simple fuselage stretch. It was essentially a massive fuselage stretch and an all new wing.

By the way, if you want to know how the DC-9-30 is different from the DC-9-40, I outlined all of that in my post about the DC-9-40 templates.

All the variants of the DC-9-30

Just like the Boeing 707, the DC-9-30 came in all sorts of different configurations. The most popular was the DC-9-31, which one is the all-passenger version. In total, there were four different sub-variants that were produced between 1967 and 1982:

1. DC-9-31: The all-passenger version. The illustrations you see above are essentially the -31.
2. DC-9-32: A version with a higher maximum takeoff weight (MTOW), which also included three sub-variants for cargo and freight operations
3. DC-9-33: A higher performance version for cargo and freight operations. Only 22 of these were built.
4. DC-9-34: The final sub-variant in the DC-9-30 series. It featured a longer range (and MTOW) thanks to higher performance engines.

Do be sure to read the Wikipedia DC-9 page to learn more about all of these sub-variants. There’s lots of juicy data over there to digest (if you’re into that sort of thing).