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Amodel Tu-128 1/72


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I've had one almost built for about a year now - it is in primer waiting for me to finish it.

It is a bugger to put together - Amodel have cleverly designed the area-ruled fuselage behind the cockpit - and incorporated the intake trunking with separate intakes and splitter plates.

But in doing so they have made lots of ill-fitting joins - all of which have to be filled and sanded smooth.

That's why I got fed up with it - but I WILL get around to finishing it.......

Ken

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Errrr.... off the top of my head>

The upper/lower wings need some sanding and shimming to get a good fit. Mainly around the tips of the lower wings (as-is, the lower wings stand proud of the upper wings, which means some tricky sanding and filling). It's doable, but you need lots of test fitting and patience.

The fuselage can be built several ways. Each has its merits, and each will cause different issues - gluing the completed upper fuselage to the completed lower fuselage, then adding the intakes lets you get nice smooth seams along the forward fuselage, but leaves issues inside the intakes, for instance. In the end, I went with the following. Glue the lower forward fuselage to the lower main fuselage, then attach the completed wings to this. Glue the intake outer halves to the upper fuselage (tricky getting them aligned here). And then glue the cockpit, canopy and intake splitter plates to the upper nose section. So you've got a lower fuselage + wings, upper nose section +splitters and an upper aft fuselage + intakes. Attach the upper aft fuselage to the lower fuselage, hooking the intakes over the wing, then slide the upper nose section in between the intakes. (stare at the parts and hopefully this will start to make sense :)) I'd suggest lots of test fitting to work out a method that's right for you though - tape the parts together to do a few dry runs.

Make sure you get the wheel well halves on the right way 'round. I've seen a couple of builds that have them backwards (the opening is at the front, bulged doors at the back)

The intake trunks are a bear, but doable. I skinned the edges with .005" sheet to bridge the gaps between the trunks and fuselage. Adding the intake outer halves lets you sand these seams (which are visible), but don't worry about the seam between the nose section and intake trunk - it's not visible. Test fitting and taping the parts together will show you what's worth filling and what will be hidden on the finished model.

On the other hand, if you don't care about intake trunks and decide to make FOD guards instead, leave out the intake parts and turbine faces. It'll probably halve your build time. :thumbsup:

Errr.... The cockpit's actually quite nice under a coat of paint, but I'd replace the seats. KS-3s are relatively close. It's also easier to scratch new missiles than to fix the kit parts. Landing gear needs detailing (as do the gear wells), and the exhausts, while they look nice, aren't entirely accurate. There's a good article on Hyperscale that shows one way to fix them. Oh, and expect to do some filling and sanding to smooth out and install the radome.

Not a shake and bake kit, but not really an impossible build either. The intakes are far and away the worst part; without them, it's actually a pretty fun limited run kit - challenging enough to give a sense of accomplishment, but not so hard that you want to blow it up.

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Or to put it another way, the 1/72 Tu-128 is about the same length and wingspan as a 1/48 F-4, and almost exactly the same length as the upper fuselage of the Academy 1/48 Su-27 (minus the *radome* - same length as the upper fuselage piece)

It's big.

And since I've got mine in front of me at the moment (stalled in the process of scratching gear detail), in addition to the above, the control surfaces are kinda tricky. The kit parts need careful cleaning up, and you're probably best adding the various flaps to the wing BEFORE gluing the wing halves together. They've got a weird interlocking system that means you can only really have them up anyway, so it's no great loss, and they're tricky to get on after the wings are joined.

Edited by MoFo
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