Midland Publishing

Russian Airliners Outside Russia

by  Dmitriy Komissarov & Yefim Gordon

Reviewed By  Jim Pearsall, IPMS# 2209

Softbound, 160 pages, with 400+ color photos. MSRP $36.95 (US) ISBN 978-1-85780-252-8 Available from Specialty Press, who provided the review copy. 1-800-895-4585, www.specialtypress.com . OK, all you guys who are airliner aficionados, here's that "all in one" book you've been hoping for. Yefim Gordon has spent a lot of years collecting photos, and I suspect that some of those of military subjects could have gotten him a trip downtown to the police station back when everything was considered a state secret. But this is the airliners, and only those "exported". Nothing from Aeroflot, but the number of countries using Russian equipment is staggering (65), and the number of airlines in those countries is also a surprise (10 just for Sudan). The photography is superbly printed. Not only do they show a representative aircraft for each airline, they also try to show multiple types. There's also a quick history of the airline and its' equipment. Below is the page for Laos. And another surprise. I knew there are a couple of An-2 "Colts" flying the airshow circuit as warbirds, but how about a US based airline using one? Here you go.

The Uzbek Il-86 is there because there's a new 1/144 kit of that aircraft announced recently. When I started this review, I thought I might make it a plea for "more Russian aircraft" in model form. But it turns out that of all the types represented in this book, there are only 3 unavailable in some form, in some scale. While some modelers may scoff at Toko's 1/288 offerings, they're airliner kits. While looking for the available airliner kits on the web, I found that the best source, as far as airliner kits and availability is Airline Hobby Supplies ® at www.airline-hobby.com . Although I've never met him in person, I have ordered from him, and he's bent over backward to supply me with stuff he doesn't normally carry. Like the Welsh Models V-Bombers he special ordered for me. My thanks to Specialty Press for providing this review copy and John Noack for letting me do this review.

About the Reviewer: Jim Pearsall has been building models since the 1950s, and joined IPMS back in the late 60s. It's about time his modeling skills got good enough to place at a local contest. And since he's retired, they have.

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