De Havilland DHC-8-300 blank illustration templates

Here’s another one that I’ve been getting a lot of requests for recently. It never would have occurred to me that the DHC-8-300 (also known as the Q300) would be as popular as it is today considering that it was launched into service way back in 1989. That’s nearly 30 years of continued operation, and from what I hear, the used market for these things is still insanely strong and competitive. As a car guy, that seems so backwards and odd to me – most used cars (with the exception of some special editions) become generally worthless after 10 years.

It was back in January that I illustrated the smaller version of this aircraft (the DHC-8-200), and to be honest I wasn’t really expecting to do the -300 so soon. It just so happened that one of my clients needed an illustration of a -300 for a proposal he was putting together, so It was relatively easy for me to modify that other template and get him the illustrations he needed.

I know a lot of you have been asking for other larger aircraft such as the MD-11 and A330NEO, and don’t worry – those are both currently on my drawing board right now and I hope to have them done relatively soon. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that if there’s a particular type what you need, paying me to do it will make it happen a lot faster. Just contact me and I can arrange to make it happen!

For those of you not familiar with Dash 8 lineup, the –300 is a stretched version of the -200. It’s 3.3m (or 11.3ft) longer to be exact, and 6.83m (22.4ft) shorter than the -400. It also happens to be powered by the same Pratt & Whitney PW123 engines are on the -200. And since I’m being nerdy and talking numbers, the –300 carries 52 to 56 passengers, whereas the –200 carries 37 to 39.

But what about the –400 you ask? Well, that varies based on which sub type you’re talking about. In a nutshell, the Q400 will carry anywhere from 68 to 78 passengers depending on configuration. As I said before, the Dash 8 family is a colossal and confusing mess of variants and sub types that are difficult to keep track of. If it wasn’t for Wikipedia, I’d have no way to keep it all straight.

OK, so who wants to see a visual comparison between the –200, –300, –400? I know a lot of you really enjoyed visual comparison I did of the Embraer ERJ family of aircraft in my last post, so now that I have three variants of the Dash 8 completed, here’s a graphic depicting the visual differences of the three that I have already illustrated:

I don’t know about you, but I can’t help but to think that the Q400 is…well…kind of ugly. I have a lot of respect for it as a capable and competitive commercial airliner of course, but it looks like they were all doing shots of whiskey one afternoon in the design studio and stretched it a little bit too far on a stupid dare. It’s kind of like what Boeing is doing with the 737 series right now. The MAX 8 is an amazing piece of machinery, but the MAX 10 is pushing it just a little bit too far and beyond the scope of what the original 737 was intended to be. That’s just my opinion anyway.