Ilyushin IL-62M "Aeroflot Moscow Olympics" [1:144 Zvezda] - DONE

[LSP_Kevin]

Lovely progress, Alex! You're really making me want to start mine, now that it has arrived. It seems to be the same boxing you have, however, so the same decals, too.

 

Kev

[Alex]

6 hours ago, LSP_Kevin said:

Lovely progress, Alex! You're really making me want to start mine, now that it has arrived. It seems to be the same boxing you have, however, so the same decals, too.

 

Kev

Don’t you have a few jetliners in progress already? ;-)

[LSP_Kevin]

50 minutes ago, Alex said:

Don’t you have a few jetliners in progress already? ;-)

 

Who, me?

 

 

Kev

[Alex]

Fingers crossed that this looks OK when the tape comes off and doesn't require too many touchups...

[The Madhatter]

nice progress Alex. Have been watching this one on the side. It's making me want one

[Alex]

An intermediate step - masked up to paint the metal leading edges.

 

And then with all the paint complete (I'm going to use the Liveries Unlimited decal for the cockpit anti-glare panel rather than do another round of mask and spray):

 

I'll probably start in on the decals this evening.

[LSP_Kevin]

That looks fantastic, Alex!

 

Kev

[Alex]

So that was a bit of a weekend decal marathon.  Zvezda is nothing if not comprehensive in their coverage of stencils for this kit - more than 60 individual decals with more than 100 total little outlines, shapes, and text placards to apply.  But it sure adds to the realism of the thing.  The Liveries Unlimited decals also worked great.  One of the nice things about that sheet (versus the kit decals) is that they supply the door outlines as separate elements from the stripes, so if you choose to paint the stripes, as I did, you can still easily use the decal doors.  My painted stripes aren't the *exact* right width to mesh with the door outlines, but close enough that your eye sort of fills in the gap.

 

I'm going to let it fully dry overnight and then see where it may need a little MicroSol persuasion.

 

The IL-62M had the most complicated wing walk stenciling of any aircraft I've ever seen.

 

Ten decals per wing just to get that on (plus a bunch of little placard decals and the registration number).  It sure adds some visual pop, though.

 

Today I got an interesting look at just how iconic this plane was in the Soviet Union in its day.  My wife (she's in her mid-50s like me) grew up in Moscow and did not move to the States until shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1986.  She has very little knowledge of or interest in either civil or military aviation (she knows that the planes with the red circles on the wings are the Japanese ones, but that's about it).  Today I showed her the paper insert from the Liveries Unlimited decal set that has the illustrations of the different schemes applied to the plane, and she immediately, like without hesitation, said "Oh yeah, that's an Ilyushin 62.  I flew in one of those."  So it made an impression in its homeland for sure.

 

[LSP_Kevin]

That looks really impressive, Alex! As you say, all those small detail decals really make the whole thing pop.

 

Kev

[Derek B]

It really is coming alive now Alex, well done.

 

Derek

[Alex]

I almost ran into a real problem here at the final step.  I decided to try out (need to remember to ALWAYS test on scrap first) using MRP lacquer as the final clearcoat over the decals.  Fortunately I applied it to the bottom first.  One of the LU registration code decals bubbled/lifted in a few places almost immediately.  Not in a huge way, but noticeably.  So for the top of the model I went right back to my usual - Vallejo acrylic clear.  I usually mix about 2/3 gloss and 1/3 flat for "new" looking aircraft like this (I would use pure flat for a camo warbird).  This worked fine, as always, and it looks like I'm going to be sticking to at least one water-based paint for the foreseeable.

 

 

 

One aspect of this build that I'm not super-happy with is the cockpit glass.  I used the Silhouette to make yellow kabuki tape masks for the individual panes, but the base white coat I used slipped under them in places (and then sealed them, I suppose, since no blue went under).  This hasn't happened in the past, and I'm not sure if it's to do with the masking material, or the specific paint, or what.  I thought briefly of using the LU cockpit window decal to cover them, but figured the added texture of the painted window frames would likely make that look ratty.  I've been happy in the past with the look of decal windscreens (like on my DC-4), but it looks strange to my eye to have decal cockpit windows when I have real transparent windows for the passenger cabin (you can see the Krystal Klear still drying on some of them in the photo).  I really, really prefer the look (and simplicity) of using KK for kits where the passenger cabin windows are molded open.  Perversely, I really like using decals, too, but only IF the kit comes with a smooth, windowless fuselage so I don't have to wrestle with filling all those holes.  I have often considered the possibility of carefully drilling and filing out the cockpit windows on the clear plastic insert on one of these kits so that I could make those windows out of Krystal Klear too, but it seems like it would be easy to screw up doing such an operation, and even if successful, easy to damage the part afterwards.  I guess for now I'm just going to remain conflicted on this, but for sure I find the cockpit glass to be the single hardest part of airliner kits.

 

I was a bit nervous too about setting the model on its "feet" for the first time, too.  Zvezda did a very good job of molding the landing gear to scale (unlike your classic super-chunky Minicraft kit), and the front gear in particular look delicate.  Add to this the fact that I probably (OK definitely) went overboard putting weight in the nose, and I was worried that the nose gear might not be up to the task.  But, as is obvious from these photos, no problems ensued.

 

Here's the underside.

 

And here it is placed among its airliner brethren on the shelf I finally put up over my desk to get some of my models out of the basement.

 

The angle of this photo kind of conceals how much bigger it is than the 737 - it's half again as long and wide.

 

I'm now conflicted on what to start next.  I need to keep up momentum on the current 1:32 warbird build, but I have almost a dozen interesting 1:144 civil air subjects on the shelf now, including a few obscure smaller Soviet-era civil transports from various eastern European outfits like A Model (e.g. a Czech Airlines IL-18 turboprop) and a Lockheed L-1011 tri-jet from Eastern Express (I had to give them a try).  I also finally got hold of a 1:144 DC-3 kit (which was surprisingly difficult to do - the 1:100 Doyusha kit is everywhere, but I want all of these civil air subjects to be the same scale, darn it).  Decisions, decisions.

[LSP_Kevin]

Looks great, Alex! Almost perfect, actually - with the main issue being the problems with the windscreen that you mentioned. You and I have diverging views on that score, but there's no doubt you do a better job at making the clear windows look more effective than I ever could.

 

With regard to the nose weight, somewhat counterintuitively, it's the main landing gear that bears the brunt of this, rather than the nose leg. It just helps bring the centre of gravity forward enough to keep the nose down and the nose wheel on the ground.

 

Kev

[jenshb]

That white finish on the fuselage - before you clearcoated it - looks fantastically smooth.  The end result looks very nice too.  How about a Super VC10 for comparison?

[Derek B]

Job well done Alex 

 

Derek

[MikeC]

That's excellent.