Zvezda

1/144 Tu 154 M

Kit Number: 7004

Reviewed by  Fred A. Amos, IPMS# 6672

MSRP: $26.30 Review kit provided by Dragon USA: www.dragonmodelsusa.com For several years when I would get tired of putting weapons on airplanes I would slip into building airliners. Over the years I have probably built a hundred or so in all the various scales, Revell, Airfix, Hasegawa, Heller and Minicraft to mention a few. But I can lay no claim to being and airliner expert. With that in mind what follows is a few of the methods I picked up along the way. This model of the Tupolev Tu 154 is only the second kit produced that I am aware of, the only other being a VEB 1/100 scale kit lacking any quality at all with plenty of rivets and bad fitting parts. The Zvezda kit is delicately molded in soft gray plastic, so soft you must be careful handling the landing gear and other thin pieces. The recessed panel lines are very fine and easy to sand out. Construction is pretty simple and moves along well until it comes to painting, more on that later. The first problem I encountered was the windows. The kit comes with clear plastic for the windows. Minicraft molds their kits with out windows and provides decals instead. If you have to put clear plastic windows in the fuselage halves, then you either paint or mask over them. So I fill them with putty. I place a piece of masking tape behind the windows on the inside of the fuselage. I then tape the fuselage halves together with the main components to determine how much weight is required to keep the nose gear down by sticking shortened toothpicks in the main gear holes. When the taped model is placed on a surface and it is tail heavy I begin putting fishing weights in the nose through the open cockpit until the nose comes down. Then the weight is super glued into the fuselage halves and they are assembled. Back to the windows. I then place strips of masking tape along side the windows to keep from getting putty in areas I don't want it to be. (See the pictures for a better explanation)

After the putty has dried I take a piece of cotton cloth soaked with denatured alcohol and rub away the putty. This will take a while but it won't remove details and will save going back later and sanding away scratch marks that sanding would leave. The wings and side engines can be assembled while the putty is drying. The bottom of the wing needs a little putty where the upper and lower halves come together just in front of the trailing edge. After the putty on the wings has been cleaned up (with denatured alcohol) they can be attached to the fuselage. No matter what I did I couldn't avoid leaving a gap between the wing and fuselage, top or bottom. I chose to get the best fit on the bottom and filled the gap on top with Mr. Surfacer 1200 and a small paintbrush. After it was dry it was rubbed down with denatured alcohol just like the putty on the windows. When all of this has been done the model should be ready to paint. I chose to model the most colorful and difficult of the three schemes provided on the decals, blue bottom, silver top separated by a sweeping cheat line. I managed to find several good photographs of the livery scheme on airliners.net and they were a big help. I painted the wings and stabilizers flat gull gray first. After they were dry enough I masked them and painted the lower fuselage and the tail flat insignia blue. In retrospect I should have use a gloss sea blue. The blue was then sprayed with future to bring some shine to the flat paint. While this was drying I scanned several copies of the decal sheet. I cut out the pieces I needed and taped them to some blue painters tape and carefully cut them out with a new #11 blade. Studying the instructions and the photos I got from airliners.net I placed the cut outs on the blue paint. When I was satisfied that the masks were in the correct locations I covered the rest of the blue area. (What we have here is a lot of masking tape). The photos I found indicate that the top color was actually a silver paint and not a natural metal finish. I painted the top with FloQuil Railroad Colors Old Silver to get that effect. When it had dried I removed the masking tape and touched up a few areas of over spray and followed that with another coating of Future. Then the moment of truth, the decal flags and orange demarcation strips fit the masked areas almost perfectly. I used some of my old Micro Scale window decals and placed them over the slight depressions left by rubbing away the putty. I then put the rest of the kit decals on to finish the model. As I was putting the finishing touches to this model I discovered just how soft the plastic really is. Trimming the stubs off of the nose gear strut one of the long pieces bent almost double and didn't break. Not wanting to ruin the paint with liquid solvent I used super glue to secure the gear legs and doors. So the model is finished and standing on its own. In summary, the Zvezda Tu154M is a welcome addition to any airline modeler's collection. The fit is very good, clear parts are very clear, and the decals are very colorful and in good registry. The few short falls of this kit are, the open windows on the fuselage, the soft plastic, and decals for the windows. And the windshield decal should be black and framed, not just the framed. I would hope that Zvezda would produce several more of the obscure Eastern European airliners So all in all this was a very enjoyable build and I can recommend it for your collection. Thanks to Dragon USA for providing the review kit.

Information, images, and all other items placed electronically on this site are the intellectual property of IPMS/USA ®.