RusAir 1:144 Antonov 10A Aeroflot

[Malair]

My latest build is the Antonov-10A in Aeroflot colours. A little background on the An-10:

 

The An-10 is a further development of the An-8. The aircraft was produced at the same time as the An-10 and An-12 (the An-8 was put into service in 1957, the An-10 in 1959). The An-8 was initially intended for military purposes, but was later also used for Aeroflot cargo transports (Eastern Express has a kit of the An-8, FYI)

 

The An-10 was developed and produced at the same time as the An-12. The An-10 as an airliner and the An-12 for the transport of (military) cargo. The main difference between the An-10/12 and the An-8 are the engines (four instead of two respectively) and the pointed nose of the An-8. The An-10 and An-12 are identical up to frame 41, at which point the An-12 starts with the cargo door section.

 

The An-10 was popular with passengers because of the spacious fuselage (4.1 meters) and the fact that the plane could take off from unpaved runways (tickets could in some cases be bought in the plane itself, for example, after which it departed when all tickets were sold, which is hard to imagine today!). The aircraft could hold about 100 passengers, but it was also produced as a passenger / cargo mix (52 passengers, 1040 kg of luggage and 9080 kg of cargo). Incidentally, the An-10 payload / TOW ratio was much lower than that of the Il-18 (which Sergey Il'yushin considered a design flaw of the An-10). However, in the communist Soviet Union there was plenty of kerosene and the benefits of the An-10 were considered more important than economic benefits. However, the An-10 did not become an export success, which the Il-18 did. In total 104 An-10 aircraft have been built.

Originally the An-10A had a "triple tails" version like the An-10 sans suffix version, but was later fitted with two central ventral fins at the bottom (this is also the version I have made). This made the device more economical, but it caused much more vibrations in the cabin.

 

Initially, the An-10 was widely used by Aeroflot, but it was not really a success story. During the first few years, there were many reliability issues (from 1959 to 1961, as many as 670 defects had been detected and corrected), as well as some very serious stability and control issues, resulting in a few accidents. The most famous of these was in 1972 when a famous singer and actor was killed. This caused so much public outrage that Aeroflot decided to retire the type in 1973. Thus, the An-10 was the first turboprop airliner to fly in the Soviet Union, the first turboprop airliner to be produced in the Soviet Union, and the first turboprop airliner to be withdrawn in the Soviet Union. The An-12 is still flying today, albeit with low numbers (I have seen them fly over my hometown of Oosterhout, The Netherlands, with a lot of noise, en route to Eindhoven). 1248 of the An-12 were eventually built.

 

The model I have made is from the excellent resin kit from RusAir. Eastern Express and AWM also have kits, but I like the one from RusAir the best, plus I have good experiences with RusAir (see also my Yak-42 and An-148 from a few years ago).

 

The decals are from the Eastern Express kit. All the window decals were made by myself. I used Tamiya white for the top of the fuselage and Inspire Chrome for the belly, wings and stabilizers (with Alclad aqua gloss sprayed over it, to make it less shiny). I used ModelMasters Steel and Aluminium for the other metal parts such as the leading and trailing edges. The wire antennae were made using a hair from my girlfried, which she graciously donated.

 

Anyway, the final result:

 

Edit: I see now that the 74 has disappeard from the starboard side registration. I will correct this later on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a few in the morning sunlight:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This will be my final model for a while, as our second child will be born within two weeks, and that will take up a lot of my time ;).

 

Thanks for looking and see you next time!

Edited March 27, 2021 by Malair

[Classic 315]

That is a beautiful model. A great iconic colour scheme and very evocative of the era. Oh, and good luck in the weeks ahead!

Edited March 26, 2021 by Classic 315

[Turbofan]

Hi Martijn,

Very, very nice! Your photography is outstanding, I love the shots on the taxiways best.

Love your natural metal finish but the icing on the cake for me is the antennae and your decal windows. Really brings it to life!

Occasionally see, and hear, an AN10 flying over my house and yes you're right they are noisy!

Good luck with your new arrival hopefully they will sleep well so you still have time for some modelling!😴🥱

Cheers,

Ian

Edited March 26, 2021 by Turbofan

[Skodadriver]

Hi Martijn

 

Thanks for another outstanding model and the interesting history. I also agree with Ian about the photographs - they really show the model to best advantage.

 

Like you I have always had good experiences with Rus-Air kits. I have almost completely given up resin kits but I make an exception for Rus-Air and I really must build the Tu-114 which has been in my stash for many years!

 

Best wishes to you and your partner for the birth.

 

Dave G

[SAT69]

Beautiful model and great photography. I'll echo the comment that the antenna wires give life to the model, as do the markings. Splendid work all the way around.

[zebra]

Very nice work Martijn. I have this kit in the stash, might build it soon. Is there a reason you didn't use the kit decals, or did you just like the scheme in the EE kit more?

 

All the best for the arrival of baby number two! 

[RidgeRunner]

Beautifully built and photographed

 

Martin

[Eric Mc]

Very nice build of an interesting and rare (especially in the West) airliner.

[Malair]

Thank you all very much for your kind words! That is much appreciated

 

19 hours ago, Turbofan said:

Hi Martijn,

Very, very nice! Your photography is outstanding, I love the shots on the taxiways best.

Love your natural metal finish but the icing on the cake for me is the antennae and your decal windows. Really brings it to life!

Occasionally see, and hear, an AN10 flying over my house and yes you're right they are noisy!

Good luck with your new arrival hopefully they will sleep well so you still have time for some modelling!😴🥱

Cheers,

Ian

I think you mean the An-12, as the An-10 was retired in 1974

 

I'm sure I will find to time to work on some models. I'm currently working on the F-RSIN L-14 (KLM), Eastern Express IL-14 (Aeroflot), F-RSIN DH91 albatross (Imperial), Authentic Airliners Convair 440 (KLM) and the Authentic Airliners Comet 4C (Mexicana). The idea is to build all of them together up to airbrushing them. As all of them have al large chunk of metal colours in them, I can airbrush them at the same time and thus save on time when cleaning my Airbrush .

 

Do you have anything in the works? Some nice conversions coming up?

 

17 hours ago, Skodadriver said:

Hi Martijn

 

Thanks for another outstanding model and the interesting history. I also agree with Ian about the photographs - they really show the model to best advantage.

 

Like you I have always had good experiences with Rus-Air kits. I have almost completely given up resin kits but I make an exception for Rus-Air and I really must build the Tu-114 which has been in my stash for many years!

 

Best wishes to you and your partner for the birth.

 

Dave G

Yes, I really like the RusAir kits (I still love Resin in general, especially the Authentic Airliner kits). I have bought most of the RusAir kits. I have build the An-148, Yak-40 and of course the An-10 already and I still have to build the IL-18, An-24, An-140, An-12, Tu-124 and yes, also the Tu-114. The Tu-114 is such a fantastic aircraft and I really want to build that one. But first should my new modeling room be completed (probably around June), so I have more space to display the models

 

12 hours ago, zebra said:

Very nice work Martijn. I have this kit in the stash, might build it soon. Is there a reason you didn't use the kit decals, or did you just like the scheme in the EE kit more?

 

All the best for the arrival of baby number two! 

The decals from RusAir are fine, but I wanted to use my photo-realistic window decals. The cheatline of the RusAir kit is continuous (the Eastern Express decal cheatline has the windows stenciled out) and as I have to print the round window decals on clear decal paper, I couldn't use them on the RusAir decals. I could also have used white decal paper, but then I would have had to cut out all the windows individually, and that's almost impossible with such small round windows.

Edited March 27, 2021 by Malair

[Homer]

A beautiful model well done 👏

[Mig88]

That's a very nicely finished kit indeed! The photos in sunlight almost look like the real thing! Well done.

 

Miguel

[RMCS]

Fantastic 

[BluesModeller]

Great model and photography.

 

You would swear you were looking at the real thing in many of those shots!

[oggy4624]

Great looking finished model. Just saw an An 12 land this evening, good to see these old workhorses sitll in action.

We had an Il 62 freighter in last week, only one of two converted - you never knoe when the oldies will show up.

[Alex1978]

Wonderful model and,as others have stated,superb photography.

 

Best wishes to you and family with your baby to come.

Edited March 29, 2021 by Alex1978

[Malair]

Everyone thanks again for all your nice words! I always try to go for realism, so I'm glad to see that you guys think I more or less managed to reach that goal