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Eastern Express is to release 1/144th Hawker-Siddeley HS 121 Trident 1/2 & 3 kits - ref. Box art Source: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=432#37108 V.P.

Good evening so finally i decided to post a progress report of my MD11. There's a lot to tell, but lets start first with some facts. The Kit is an Eastern Express, ordered from 26decals. So i got the kit with some decals, i did not want to use on this one, instead i will go with Liveries unlimited FEDEX stuff. Some big decisions had to be made in advance, like the RCI windshield. I am not advertising my own products, since i stopped producing them, but obviously the reason why i used it here is the reason why i created this stuff, i think it is better than the window decals and also the clear part, which comes with the kit. I usually only build cabin windows, since this is really hard to do on this one, i've chosen a freighter from Fedex. Believe me, it was not easy to get the Tailnumber right so lets start... this is my own clear part i sold until a few months ago... i think up until now there is no clear part depicting the real thing as good as this, the MD11 geometry is quite special, and this is what i had in mind: As you can see ( and some of you probably know) this one can be quite painful regarding fit and sanding... i decided to first match all fuselage parts, so that there is a complete half (like standard kits)

After the MD-11 (link), Eastern Express is working on a 1/144th McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 kit. Source: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=405#36881 V.P.

Sources: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=378#36252 https://www.facebook.com/mashtabekb/posts/1822591094429752 3D renders V.P.

Here's my third completed build from the excellent Flying Boats and Floatplanes II group build (if you haven't looked you should check it out - there are some excellent builds there) - this is the Eastern Express 1/144 Beriev Be-200 Altair. Build thread is here. Apologies for duplicated photos - can't seem to stop it! thanks for looking Julian

As I'm only involved in the Lockheed Group Build over the next two months, I thought that I would try to build my MD-11 alongside the Tristar. It will certainly be finished as one of those in the KLM fleet that I've flown on - probably PH-KCD "Florence Nightingale" but perhaps PH-KCE "Audrey Hepburn" The kit comes with decals for the later (narrow cheatline) livery but I've also got the 26Decals for the delivery scheme with the wide blue & white cheatline - which would be much easier to mask / paint. So far the four sections of the fuselage have been assembled: The two port sections were glued together on a sheet of glass - although this still left a small gap on the outside of the joint. The two starboard parts didn't fit as well, so I added the tail section to the complete port side first and then the forward section. The above photo shows the results of an initial round of filling, sanding, priming and rescribing - not too bad (sorry forgot to take a photo before starting this process) Looking at the side profile some more filler is needed just above the red ball Mike

Eastern Express is to release a family of 1/144th Bombardier Q Series (ex-de Havilland DHC-8 Dash kits. Source: http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235033221-eastern-express-catalog-2018-online/ Thanks Sergey. - ref. 144132 - Bombardier Q-200 Dash 8 - ref. 144134 - Bombardier Q-300 Dash 8 - ref. 144135 - Bombardier Q-400 Dash 8 Q-200 sprues V.P.

Eastern Express is to release 1/144th Britten-Norman BN-2A Mk.III Trislander kits Source: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=540#38272 V.P.

Another Swiss airline for my collection. This is a new kit by Eastern Express and as such its of the same good quality as all their newer airliner kits. Still short run and nothing for beginners though but nicely molded parts with fine engraved panellines. Nicely detailed but they overdid it again esp. for a kit in that small size.Some parts are so small,they are prone to get lost by simply looking at them... The landing gear has lots of very small parts,here I wish EE would mold the gear legs in one single part rather than 4 ! just for the leg.... Nonetheless a wonderful little F-27 from EE. The decals are very well printed and nice to work with. The build is a bit challenging considering those tiny parts but the fit,with some careful preparation,is quite good. Construction of this model took a few months,with breaks,to complete,but it was a fun build and I am looking forward to the EE Fokker 50 that I recently bought. Painted with Revell enamels and clear coated with Tamyia Semi-Gloss Balair was a subsidiary of Swissair and operated 4 F-27s in the 60s until early 70s,mainly on Swissair routes. Cheers, And with "something else" The MD-80 can be seen in the next RFI

In case anyone is interested Ray Charles currently has EE DC-10s at £35 plus postage. He's offering a tempting range of decals including Iberia, Sabena and Monarch. It may also be worth noting that Ray is intending to stop production of laser decals at the end of this year. Dave G (PS I have no connection with Ray except as a customer)

Eastern Express has released the DC-10-30! Wonder of it could be modified using an EE MD-11, sanding and remolding the tail section, to make a DC-10-40?? Anyone willing to try??? 1/144Here are sprue pics.....

Eastern Express is to release a 1/144th Convair 880 kit - ref. Source: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=378#36281 Box art V.P.

The first real 737-100 injection molded kit also comes from Eastern Express. Their quality improvement compared to their earlier kits is outstanding,although their kits are usually in short run quality but they are much more accurate and better to build than most of their older models. The 737-100 belongs already to the newer offerings,recessed panellines and fine details are there although still a bit rough in some spots but the overall quality is fine. The build itself is a bit tricky in some parts and filler is needed frequently,but careful preparation can be a great help. I compared the fuselage of the EE kit with an Airfix and its really almost 1cm shorter than the latter,so you end up with a real -100. The only mistake EE did,are the engines.They are too long and clearly belong to the -200. As the Airfix 737 has the shorter engines,I just switched them and smacked the Airfix engines on the EE kit. The EE engines will also fit on the Airfix kit with some slight modifications. Eastern express overdid the detailing on the landing gear with far too many tiny parts,so I decided to use the front gear and al the wheels from a Revell 737-800. With some adjustments these parts fitted quite well. The Singapore Airlines decals are from MACH 1,they seem to be very old but they still worked perfectly. The instructions show where to trim the stripes on the shorter fuselage.They were designed to fit on the Airfix 737 kit,but the instruction has a 1:1 stripe replica wich outlines the spots for the cuts to be made. The windows are from a 707 and 727 detail set,but I will probably replace them with AA realistic windows in some time. All paints are Revell and Testors enamels and the wings are slightly weathered with HUmbrol graphite powder. Hope you like the Baby Boeing

As a TriStar admirer,I was very excited when Eastern Express finally came up with an injection molded kit of the -500 and I bought it right away. At first sight it looks like a cut down version of their "standard" -1011 kit which was obviously ripped and slightly altered from the Otaki kit. But it really turned out to be a little more than that. The greater wingspan of the -500 was added and also the bigger front cargo door is included. The build itself has its ups and downs as its a common thing with short run kits. Most of the parts need a fair amound of filling and sanding but with careful preparation of the parts it goes together quite well. The S-duct of the No.2 engine is also included but its a bit tricky to fit it into the fuselage halves. I built it mostly OOB,I just repaced the landing gear with an Airfix leftover,because the original parts had some serious molding issues and were beyond use.Some adjustments had to be done on them to fit into the EE kit. Painted entirely with Revell and Testors enamels and sligtly weathered with Humbrol graphite powder. Eastern Express offers this kit in different airline liveries,I chose the Air Transat version as this airline is a frequent visitor at our airport during summer. When they started their weekly service back in 1992 from Montreal to Basel (Switzerland),the TriStar was used,later added by a second weekly service done with Boeing 757-200s. So as a reminder of those good old days I wanted a TriStar in Air Transat livery for quite some time. Cheers

Looking through some old aircraft magazines recently, I came across an article in the May 1977 edition of Aircraft Illustrated about the introduction of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 30 with British Caledonian. The article stated that BCAL had also evaluated the Boeing 747SP, and the proposed long range Lockheed L-1011 500, before eventually settling on the DC-10. The 747SP was ruled of on cost, and the fact that if provided too much capacity for the airline at the time, however the TriStar 500 closely matched BCAL's route requirements and was suitable from both a performance and economic view point. At the time of the evaluation the production of the -500 had not been given the the official go-ahead by Lockheed and as an interim BCAL was offered the TriStar 100, until the new higher performance variant became available, which in turn swung the deal in favour of the DC-10. British Airways became the official launch customer for the TriStar 500 in August 1976, and as they say the rest is history. This got me thinking though - 'what if' BCAL had gone with Lockheed's offering and subsequently became the joint launch customer with B.A.?!? My model depicts what I imagine their second TriStar 'Bravo Mike' might have looked like when delivered to the airline in the spring of 79. Now onto the model - I'll keep this brief. A under engineered, poorly executed, and horrendously over priced excuse of a model. Although I am quite pleased with the end result, it fought me every step of the way. The low point being the unequal lengths of the rear fuselage halves resulting in canyon sized gaps that had to be filled with numerous applications of epoxy resin and much sanding. Try as I might I couldn't completely eliminate the slight step where the tail section meets the main body. The tail and cheatline colours were hand painted with Revell acrylics, with the BCAL titling, golden lions, a/c reg and names taken from the 26decals early BCAL DC-10 scheme sheet.I also used the Nazca decals L-1011 detail sheet , with fuselage and flight deck windows, and some aluminium trim from Authentic decals. I hope you don't mind my little indulgence...now where did I put that Authentic Airliners 747SP?!? halvesvv

Eastern Express has just released 1/144th Fokker F-27-200 kits - ref. EE144115-1 - Fokker F-27-200 Balair Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-balair-eastern-express-144115-01.html - ref. EE144115-2 - Fokker F-27-200 Air UK Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-air-uk-eastern-express-144115-02.html - ref. EE144115-3 - Fokker F-27-200 Finnair Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-finnair-eastern-express-144115-03.html - ref. EE144115-4 - Fokker F-27-200 SAS Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-sas-eastern-express-144115-04.html - ref. EE144115-5 - Fokker F-27-200 North West Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-northwest-eastern-express-144115-05.html - ref. EE144115-6- Fokker F-27-200 All Nippon Airways Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/fokker-27-200-all-nippon-airways-eastern-express-144115-06.html V.P.

...sorry. Hi, I received this kit just before Christmas and did a quick "comment" on it over in the Rumourmonger section. It's part of an ever expanding range of much neglected airliners being put out by the Russian model making company called Eastern Express (EE). The celebration amongst airliner modellers with each new release is tempered slightly by the high prices being asked and in some (but not all) cases, less than perfect fit. I've bought quite a few of their kits and some range from OK (Fokker F-27) to actually very nice (MD-87 and the McDD T-tail range they have). Hopefully this one will build up to be, if not very nice, then OK. Box art consists of an actual picture of the subject but some of their releases do feature a bit of drawn artwork, but some of it is a little bit suspect... Fuselage halves: Wings: Engines: and all the rest: Overall, the model isn't too badly made but there are a couple of small issues present, and but nothing insurmountable. The kit is available in four versions at the moment and I chose Channel Express, though I was, and still am, tempted by Air UK. I'll be starting it very shortly and it will be squeezed in amongst this lot - F-rsin ATR-72 (Flybe Nordic), Hasegawa YS-11 (Phuket Air), Eastern Express F-27 (yeah, I know - Air UK) and Shorts 360 from the same company (American Eagle). There are others that aren't on the bench at the moment but they may make a background appearance as I progress with this one. Jeff

Eastern Express catalog 2019 is online here: http://scalemodels.ru/news/13519-EASTERN-EXPRESS-1-144-Catalogue-2019.html Pages with new ref. V.P.

Eastern Express has just released a 1/144th McDonnel Douglas MD-87 kit - ref. 144110 Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/civil-airliner-md-87-iberia-airlines-eastern-express-144110.html V.P.

Eastern Express has just relased new tooling 1/144th Boeing B-733 kits - ref. 144129-01 - Boeing B-733 "Jet 2" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-jet-2-eastern-express-144129-01.html - ref. 144129-02 - Boeing B-733 "South West" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-south-west-eastern-express-144129-02.html - ref. 144129-03 -Boeing B-733 "Varig" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-varig-eastern-express-144129-03.html - ref. 144129-04 - Boeing B-733 "Frontier" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-frontier-eastern-express-144129-04.html - ref. 144129-05 - Boeing B-733 "KLM" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-klm-eastern-express-144129-05.html - ref. 144129-05 - Boeing B-733 "Western Pacific" Source: https://hobbyterra.com/product/airliner-733-western-pacific-eastern-express-144129-06.html V.P.

After the F-27 (link) Eastern Express is to release 1/144th Fokker F-50 kits Source: http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=405#36611 - ref. E144126 - Fokker 50 - ref. E144126-1 - Fokker 50 "Austrian" - ref. E144126-2 - Fokker 50 "Iberia Regional" - ref. E144126-3 - Fokker 50 "Air Baltic" - ref. E144126-4 - Fokker 50 "SAS Eurolink" - ref. E144126-5 - Fokker 50 "Virgin Australia" - ref. E144126-6 - Fokker 50 "Fly VLM" V.P.

Eastern Express was not known for quality kits not too long ago. But they changed significantly and their Boeing 717 (McDonnell-Douglas MD-95) kit is a superb kit in every aspect. They recently released other Douglas airliners,such as the MD-87,DC-9-30 and MD-80 along with others. The MD-87 is already in my stash and the MD-80 is to follow but the Boeing 717 is now the first one that I have built. It is very detailed,although in my opinion they overdid it with the landing gear.It looks teriffic but there are so tiny parts,its almost impossible to hold them with a tweezer.If they snip off...its a victim for the carpet monster...it happened to the front landing gear which I had to replace with a piece from a AZ-Model DC-9-30... The fit is quite good but its not Revell Airliner standard and all parts need careful cleaning and dryfitting.If one's aware of that,the build is straight forward. The other thing that impresses me with those new Eastern Express kits, is their quality improvement on their decals.They are superb and nice to work with and Eastern Express offers some very interesting paint schemes on each of their airliners,which makes it difficult to make a choice... I really liked the Qantas Link scheme with the Tasmanian Devil I painted the whole fuselage with Revell gloss white,the wings are Testors aircraft grey and the metall areas are Revell metallics. Clear coated with Future. Hope you like her

Fokker F-27 Friendship EI-AKD Aer Lingus, 1960s 1/144 Eastern Express kit converted to F-27 Series 100 with Classic-Airlines decals I bought this little kit from 26 Decals for £16 (ironically without decals!) (I later discovered that Hannants are selling it for £49.99 with decals – that’s quite an expensive decal sheet). Classic-Airlines.com already had decals designed for the Doyusha kit for £8 – which were adapted by Nick Webb to fit the Eastern Express kit, so I bought an Aer Lingus set. The Eastern Express kit has the long nose of the later version and needed modifying back to a Series 100 which Aer Lingus operated. The markings here are the second iteration on the F-27, the first being the green fuselage top and white cheat line variety used on the original issue Airfix F-27 in 1/72 scale. I had intended a ‘quick build’ of this one, but it never turns out that way, does it? Even though this is a new, modern kit, the fit of everything everywhere needed much fettling and large amounts of Milliput – you know the story I’m sure. But as usual I got there in the end and I’m quite pleased with the result: Chris (By the way, yes, I had noticed the Irish flag colours are the wrong way round on the Starboard side!)

Another potential release according to another forum. http://www.pas-decals.ru/forum/novosti/1078-novinki-vostochnyj-ekspress?start=351 A 500 series would have been more popular with me, but who knows judging by the way they are doing most of the DC-9 family. Dave