1/144 Ilyushin IL-96-300

[Dereknf]

My effort at the old Eastern Express Il-96. I added the Braz landing gear which involved lots of cutting, trimming, sanding, guessing, poor language then more trimming and sanding. It sort of worked in the end. Then I made a school-boy error by not putting weight in the nose. Doh..... The model now sits on the centre gear with the nose not quite touching the ground. The white is sprayed Halfords Appliance White and the grey brushed Light Aircraft Grey. Decals are from F-Dcal and were my first effort at laser printed decals with every design having to be trimmed closely. Anyway, here it is.

[stringbag]

Now that's a bit special

How was the basic kit with regards to fit and accuracy Derek? I've heard it can be a pig to assemble however your finished model would suggest otherwise

Thanks for sharing.

Chris.

[Canalguna]

Like it! Congrats

[niki]

Knowing how the kit looks in its box, I can appreciate the effort you put into it. Nice paint job and good work on those decals!

And thanks for the note on the BraZ LG

Cheers,

Niki

[Viking]

You don't see many of these! Great to see such an unusual build here, and looking so good.

Cheers

John

[Alex1978]

Very nice model you have built there. The Eastern Express kit is pure nightmare.

I built this kit with the exact same livery as yours a few years back.

I used Boeing 747 landing gears for my build and they worked quite well with only little modification work needed.

[Dereknf]

Thanks folks. Fit-wise, the fuselage halves needed a it of fettling, I lined up the top surface and filled and sanded the under side - with limited success. The engine all had seperate parts numbers but then the instructions didn't say which ones went where so by a bit trial and error they fitted. The Braz gear is very good but a lot of plastic had to be remove from the inside of the wing top surface to get the wing halves together. The Braz instructions aren't the clearest and getting all the gear lined up was a challenge. Worked out OK though.

[MikeW]

I added the Braz landing gear which involved lots of cutting, trimming, sanding, guessing, poor language then more trimming and sanding.

I thought I was the only one. Nicely done.

I never got around to adding wheels to mine, and to date, one of the very few kits I have built that I no longer have,

Cheers,

Mike

[Graeme H]

Very impressive, proves that kit can be built to a great standard

[Skodadriver]

Superb piece of work. Congratulations on producing such an excellent model from such an unpromising kit.

[Pin]

Not the easiest kit to build!

[Dereknf]

Thanks again for the kind comments. I'm tackling Zvezda'a Il-86 at the moment which is altogether much easier.