1/72 Amodel Tupolev Tu-134

[zebra]

The An-24 and An-30 look quite nice. Looking forward to getting into them. I think one of my next purchases might be the new Il-14P or Il-14T. I seem to have a cold war era Soviet aircraft thing going on at the moment!

[Jure Miljevic]

There is plenty of unusual liveries for Ilyushins, too. Happy modelling and cheers

Jure

[zebra]

Not got a lot done this weekend (busy weekend thanks to my son's birthday party) but have got the wings, tailplanes and a few other bits painted. For the leading edges of the wings, tailplanes and fin, and the intakes, I used Vallejo Metal Colour aluminium. I was a bit disappointed with it - it didn't go on as nicely as I'd expected, and it's a bit grainy. I think I'll go back to Tamiya AS-12 next time, but it's fine for this purpose. I used Tamiya XF-19 for the grey. Onto the white next, and I really must get on with the decals.

 

 

[Flyingdutchman]

Looks very much like a Tu-134. Would you mind sharing an underside shot? I'm dry fitting my wings but that's quite a challenge. I'm reinforcing with brass rod etc.

 

Evert 

[Jure Miljevic]

Leading edges are looking fine, Julian. I am not a big fan of Vallejo paints either; a P-38 kit I painted with (I think) Aluminum looked like a worst kind of plastic toy and you could rub the paint off with your fingers. I did, however, sprayed it with a regular Valleyjo paint so perhaps with specialized airbrush paints result would be better. Cheers

Jure

[zebra]

On 2/19/2017 at 10:30 PM, Flyingdutchman said:

Looks very much like a Tu-134. Would you mind sharing an underside shot? I'm dry fitting my wings but that's quite a challenge. I'm reinforcing with brass rod etc.

 

Evert 

 

I'll take an underside shot at the weekend. To be honest, there's a small ridge between the underside of the wings and the belly, but I decided to live with it. The belly fairing is quite flexible and if I was to build this kit again I think I'd add some material to the inside to push the belly out a bit and help it to form a better join with the underside of the wing.

 

I thought about how I might reinforce the wing but the anhedral makes it tricky. In the end I just butt-joined the wing without reinforcement - it seems to have made a pretty strong, stable join.

[zebra]

Another weekend that was busy with non-modelling stuff but got a few hours in on the Tu-134 this afternoon. The main focus of the afternoon was on the decals - I printed them out on paper and test-fitted the cheat lines to the fuselage, which I wanted to get done before painting the fuselage. A few tweaks later and I've got an almost complete set of decal artwork - just got the registrations left to do. Photos of the test-fitting of the cheat lines are below. I've also given the fuselage a first coat of white primer - haven't photographed that though. More next weekend, although I have another busy non-modelling day at the Australian International Airshow on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

[Jure Miljevic]

Colourful cheat lines, Julian. I am looking forward to learn new tricks about applying gloss white paint. This part is always the most difficult one for me when building airliner models. Cheers

Jure

[zebra]

5 hours ago, Jure Miljevic said:

Colourful cheat lines, Julian. I am looking forward to learn new tricks about applying gloss white paint. This part is always the most difficult one for me when building airliner models. Cheers

Jure

Hi Jure

I use matt white paint from a rattle can (I don't decant it - I spray it straight from the can). I'll spray it in multiple light coats, which might take a few days to get good coverage but that works for me - I get very little modelling time during a working week, but spraying a light coat of matt white from a rattle can takes so little time that it's something I can do very quickly in the morning and evening, so by the time I get to the weekend I should have a good coat of white paint. Every two or three coats I give it a gentle rub down with a fairly fine (I think 4000 grit) micro mesh. Then to get the gloss finish I'll polish it with a succession of increasingly fine grades of micro mesh (ending up at 12000 grit) until I have a good gloss finish.

 

It's a little time consuming but works really well - for example I used it on my Amodel Tu-104A

 

cheers

Julian

[Hewy]

9 minutes ago, zebra said:

Hi Jure

I use matt white paint from a rattle can (I don't decant it - I spray it straight from the can). I'll spray it in multiple light coats, which might take a few days to get good coverage but that works for me - I get very little modelling time during a working week, but spraying a light coat of matt white from a rattle can takes so little time that it's something I can do very quickly in the morning and evening, so by the time I get to the weekend I should have a good coat of white paint. Every two or three coats I give it a gentle rub down with a fairly fine (I think 4000 grit) micro mesh. Then to get the gloss finish I'll polish it with a succession of increasingly fine grades of micro mesh (ending up at 12000 grit) until I have a good gloss finish.

 

It's a little time consuming but works really well - for example I used it on my Amodel Tu-104A

 

cheers

Julian

I like your white paint method, I'll have to try that,  the 134 is looking smart mocked up ,I'm going to quiz you on making you're own decals soon

Glynn

[kev67]

It might sound strange but I read some where that gloss black is a very good base coat for white

[zebra]

13 hours ago, Hewy said:

I'm going to quiz you on making you're own decals soon

 

Perhaps wait until we know they work!

[zebra]

12 hours ago, kev67 said:

It might sound strange but I read some where that gloss black is a very good base coat for white

 

You're right, it does sound strange! But I can kind of see how that might work, in the same way that it works for a polished metal finish. I'll give it a go some time. Not convinced I'll be brave enough to try it on the Airfix Victor though!

[Jure Miljevic]

Hello, Julian

My computer broke down, hence late response ... Interesting new method for applying white paint. The closest I ever came to this is gloss white rattle-can auto repair spray, which did not work very well. Still, I am willing to try your method out and I have just the guinea pig I need in a form of DC-9 in 1/144, almost ready for painting. Do not worry about decals, Julian: once you determine proper printer settings it is not difficult at all. Cheers

Jure

[zebra]

Another busy non-modelling weekend thanks to the Australian International Airshow yesterday (good show, not quite RIAT though, glorious weather, many photographs taken, some of which will appear in the Aviation Photography forum in due course. Some will say the star of the show was the RAAF F-35 but for me it was the Volga-Dnepr An-124) but did get some time today to polish the fuselage and paint the anti-glare panel on the nose and red tips on the wings and tailplanes. During polishing one of the two strakes on top of the fuselage came off - not a big problem, but whilst painting the red tips I knocked the mixing jar over and tipped red paint all over it. So that'll have to be repainted before it goes back on.

 

Decal sheet has been printed. The sheet was big enough for two copies of everything, so I duplicated everything so as to have some spares. It looks like it's come out pretty well - colours look fairly dense - I'm now going to leave it for a couple of days before coating it with liquid decal film (I read somewhere on BM that it's best to leave it a couple of days for the ink to really fully dry, otherwise you can get some smudging when you give it the overcoat). Have to say I'm pretty pleased with progress with the decals so far - if they go on ok, I can see myself doing more of this.

 

In the meantime, hoping to get a bit of time this week to put the main undercarriage together. Also need to start painting some of the smaller parts (undercarriage doors, antennae etc, not to mention repainting the fuselage strake).

 

Here's how the Tu-134 is looking so far:

 

[Alex1978]

15 minutes ago, zebra said:

Another busy non-modelling weekend thanks to the Australian International Airshow yesterday (good show, not quite RIAT though, glorious weather, many photographs taken, some of which will appear in the Aviation Photography forum in due course. Some will say the star of the show was the RAAF F-35 but for me it was the Volga-Dnepr An-124) but did get some time today to polish the fuselage and paint the anti-glare panel on the nose and red tips on the wings and tailplanes. During polishing one of the two strakes on top of the fuselage came off - not a big problem, but whilst painting the red tips I knocked the mixing jar over and tipped red paint all over it. So that'll have to be repainted before it goes back on.

 

Decal sheet has been printed. The sheet was big enough for two copies of everything, so I duplicated everything so as to have some spares. It looks like it's come out pretty well - colours look fairly dense - I'm now going to leave it for a couple of days before coating it with liquid decal film (I read somewhere on BM that it's best to leave it a couple of days for the ink to really fully dry, otherwise you can get some smudging when you give it the overcoat). Have to say I'm pretty pleased with progress with the decals so far - if they go on ok, I can see myself doing more of this.

 

In the meantime, hoping to get a bit of time this week to put the main undercarriage together. Also need to start painting some of the smaller parts (undercarriage doors, antennae etc, not to mention repainting the fuselage strake).

 

Here's how the Tu-134 is looking so far:

 

Very nice so far.Looking forward to the finished Tupolev.Received mlne yesterday,couldn't  resist ordering one after seeing your progess...

[Jure Miljevic]

Hi, Julian

Your Tu-134 is coming together nice and I can still see the nose undercarriage leg in place, good work. I also have had my share of knocking over paint jar incidents and it is certainly better to spil paint over the strake than over the fuselage.

A quick word about decals coating: it depends much about type of decals, printer and printer settings you use. I use Experts Choice Decals. I set my previous printer (HP) to the best photo-paper quality and could leave freshly printed decals to dry for days without any smudging appearing. Recently I bought EPSON and while quality of prints at best quality, max dpi setting increased, some smudging occasionally appears if I do not cover freshly printed decals with a very thin coat of liquid film within a minute or two after printing is finished. A second coat usually follows several hours later. Each printer-decals-setting combination has its quirks, but they can be fairly quickly figured out with some trial and error experimenting. Cheers

Jure

P.S.: An-124 is very impressive airplane, agreed. I had an oportunity to examine it while she had been picking up heavy cargo on Brnik years ago. However, I recenlty read about China being interesting in An-225 and now I want to crawl all over that one, too.

Edited March 5, 2017 by Jure Miljevic
P.S. added

[zebra]

Done! Well almost - just missing anti-collision beacons. I have some clear red resin ones somewhere that will do the job, just can't find them. They'll show up, I'll add them when they do.

 

The decals worked pretty well, but were quite stretchy - getting the cheat lines on straight was a challenge, not sure I've done the best job there. Also despite all the test printing, the spacing of the emergency exit outlines wasn't quite right. But I'm pretty pleased with how the decals came out. 

 

The KV masks worked well, but left some adhesive residue on the windows. The best method I could find to remove it was to lick it and then rub it with kitchen paper, which worked pretty well! The wheels were the final challenge - I used the Armory resin wheels, which added a little detail (but not that much more than the kit parts) but the real advantage was that I didn't have to stick together and clean up the seams on 10 wheels. Getting them aligned so that 10 wheels were touching the ground at the same time was a challenge (it's not quite perfect, but it'll do).

 

All in all, an enjoyable build, just challenging enough to keep it interesting, not so challenging as to make it frustrating. I'd make another, but probably won't - plenty of other things to build first!

 

One photo here - more to go in an RFI shortly:

 

Edited March 13, 2017 by zebra

[modelldoc]

Thanks for these superb building report. It is so helpful and soon I start these project, but with different markings for the German version.

 

modelldoc