1/100 VEB Plasticart Tupolev Tu-154, total rebuild

[Bjorn]

When I was a teenager, I had a great interest in Soviet aviation (which still is among my favourite subjects). At that time, few Soviet aircraft, apart from the most famous MiGs, had been released by western manufacturers. To my happiness, in some stores - often not hobby stores - more obscure Soviet aircraft could be found in large, flat, pretty anonymus boxes covered with perhaps not the most brilliant boxarts. Opening the boxes, one could find out that these kits were made by a company called VEB Plasticart (VEB=Volkseigener Betrieb=People-owned company) based in the hard-spelled city of Zschopau in East Germany.

The crude boxart was in many ways mirroring the content, that was far from what I was used to. Apart from being pretty basic and not always correct in shape, these kits were almost always in 1/100 scale and - even worse - they were moulded in the hardest plastic ever being used in the whole plastic model history. On the positive side, the boxes also supplied small tubes with aluminium paint. Compared to them, old Humbrol enamel smelled like a lovely roses, but they were by far the best aluminium paint one could find in the 1980s. But still, these kits were often the only choice, and I built about 1/3 of all Plasticart kits. My favourites were the airliners.  While a Mi-1 helicopter was almost hard to see in 1/100, an airliner in the same scale was pretty impressive. I built these when I was about fourteen-fifteen years old, and some of them have survived until today. Landing gears and most small parts are often gone, but thanks to the hard plastic, these are almost indestructible.

One of my favourites was the Tupolev Tu-154 airliner. Apart from being one of the best-looking airliners ever, it was one of the better Plasticart kits. I have had plans for years to build this again, and a few years ago, I bought a new decal sheet from Revaro. These are still made in Germany by the company Reifra, but I have hesitated due to the high cost. To be honest, there are other kits that I am more interested in spending my money on. But discovering this GB, a thought crossed my mind - maybe I could rebuild my old model?

So here is what I started with. Landing gears are long gone, but I managed to find most of them. A fellow modeller supplied me with most of the rest. I built this one when I was fourteen, and renovated it a year later, hand-painting a newer Aeroflot livery and logo than the old-style one that the original kit portrayed. (Could be seen on this picture of a OOB build by another modeller: https://airlinercafe.com/model/kit-plasticart-veb-tupolev-tu-154-4665/

The cheatline is hand-painted on the original decal, I made a new flag from a spare decal, hand-painting the hammer and sickle, and hand-painted the "Aeroflot" text on spare decal film that was cut to get sharp edges. The "Ty-154" text was made with Letraset letters. Altohugh far from perfect, I am still pretty impressed of the result!

 

Next step was to break up (at least most of) the parts in pieces. I managed to do this witout destroying too much, apart from a small part of the wing root that was left on the wing. Clear parts and all small details (not so many, to be honest), were saved for later:



Thanks to Mr. Muscle, almost all old Humbrol enamel was removed:



And here we are now. I have not decided yet how ambitious this project will be. Probably, I will remove the old panel lines - probably inspired by the height of the Berlin wall - and rescribe them. If this is possible, that is. As mentioned, the plastic is not hard, it is H.A.R.D!

[Mjwomack]

 It's builds like this which distract me from ever getting round to doing any work on my ones😉

[CliffB]

An interesting project and, as you say Björn, your teenage effort is very impressive 👍

[Mjwomack]

On 8/8/2025 at 9:38 AM, Bjorn said:

As mentioned, the plastic is not hard, it is H.A.R.D!

So that's what became of Bakelite 🤣, think something similar is being used on my Rosebud Kitmaster locomotive- it seems resitant to all modern cements, maybe time to get out the soldering iron😱, og that won't work will it? Bakelite was known for it's thermal resistance as well as the asbestos!

[JOCKNEY]

I can't be the only one that was sad to see the aircraft stripped to its bare essentials 

 

Best of luck with the rebirth

 

Cheers Pat 

[Mjwomack]

On 8/9/2025 at 12:07 PM, JOCKNEY said:

I can't be the only one that was sad to see the aircraft stripped to its bare essentials 

 

Best of luck with the rebirth

 

Cheers Pat 

It's vetenary, not vivisection. Think Six million Dollar Man had a modelling episode!

[2996 Victor]

Interesting (re-)build, Bjorn - looking forward to watching your progress with this.

 

Cheers,

Mark

[Bjorn]

Somehow I managed to find the old original box, having survived since I bought the kit in 1982! Who will be first to recognize the city below the clouds?  



It is a bit odd that there actually exist aftermarket decals for this one! When I got these, I learned that the domain .su for "Soviet Union" actually exist (you can see the web address below to the left). And even if the USSR broke up before the breakthrough of the Internet, the domain is widely used in Russia side by side wit the .ru domain. A bit strange if you ask me!

 

Re-build started with glueing the hyper-thick windows in place and by adding an extremely simplified cockpit that will almost be invisible behind the thick cockpit window. But at least you will notice something in there. And yes, the typical Soviet cockpit turquise was also used in civilian aircraft (although parts of the cockpit was painted in a grass-green colour - but this was good enough for this build.


 

 

 

Edited October 2 by Bjorn

[AdrianMF]

Smashing start. The old one looked pretty damn' good.

 

I have built precisely one (see the inspiration gallery) of the less accurate VEB Plastikart kits, enjoyed it (in the end) and I'm quitting while I'm ahead.

 

Looking forward to the (re) build!

 

Regards,

Adrian

[TheyJammedKenny!]

Wow!  Impressive project.  As for the city on the box art, looks like Budapest to me.

 

Did you order the Revaro decals directly from the manufacturer in Belarus?

[Bjorn]

7 hours ago, TheyJammedKenny! said:

Wow!  Impressive project.  As for the city on the box art, looks like Budapest to me.

 

Did you order the Revaro decals directly from the manufacturer in Belarus?

Thanks! And yes, Budapest it is! 

I ordered them from Ebay a couple of years ago (before the invasion of Ukraine), I think it was from the manufacturer - although I thought that he was based in Russia.

[TheyJammedKenny!]

9 hours ago, Bjorn said:

although I thought that he was based in Russia

 Others can confirm but I'm pretty sure Revaro is in Belarus and similar restrictions apply.  At any rate, this is a great project!