International Scale Modeller

I'll be doing Trumpeters IL-78 in 1/144 scale. I've always been a fan of big planes, especially tankers, so i'm pretty excited. First some pictures of the kit. Sorry for the terrible quality. I'm using my phone and I didn't set up any lighting.

Box


Fuselage halves and wheels


Canopy and glass nose


Wing and horizontal stabilizer halves


Refueling pods


Tail assembly


Engines and main gear bay



You may have noticed that I didn't include any pictures of the cockpit. That's because the kit doesn't come with one. But with so much glass up front that just won't do, with the kit assembled oob you can see straight through the aircraft. So I'm going to have to make a cockpit...from scratch...in 1/144 scale...yikes. My scratch building skills right now are basically nonexistent right now so this should be quite the adventure.

First attempt at building the cockpit. It's pretty basic looking and the fit could be better, but it went a lot better than I thought it would. I'll still probably rebuild it, I just need to find some better references first.



held in place between the fuselage halves.

Looks great!!! Keep it up

Ok, I haven't had a whole lot of time to work on this the last couple months between work, school, and rowing but I've made some progress.

The cockpit is put together and painted. It's not very detailed and the blue isn't the really the correct color but considering the only way to see any of it is looking through the tiny windscreen panels I'm okay with it.


The joins between the landing gear bay and the fuselege are rounded off which leaves some pretty cavernous panel lines when it's put together. No big deal, a little liquid sprue and some sanding should take care of it pretty easily


The wings and horizontal stabilizers are together as well. the leading edge of the wings is a separate piece which doesn't fit great. Not a huge problem but it seems like an unnecessary hassle considering how well the wing halves went together.


Of course all of that pales in comparison to the nightmare that is the tail section of this plane. You see the IL-78 is based on the IL-76, which is a cargo aircraft. As such it of course has large cargo doors in the tail section. The first IL-78s were simply converted IL-76s with refueling probes and extra fuel tanks installed and they could be converted back and fourth from one type to the other relatively easily. However the IL-78M (which is what this kit is) is specifically made for refueling so to save weight the cargo door were deleted. The trumpeter kit is also based on the IL-76 which means it comes with the detail for the cargo doors molded in. What was there solution to this problem you ask? They provided a sprue with the tail section of the IL-78M (in three pieces for some unknown reason) and told you to just cut off the cargo doors and replace them.




This thing is the bane of my existence. Even if I had managed to cut in the right place the first time, which considering the vague "cut here" channel thats molded in would be no small feat, the middle section of the new tail is still to long.


Had I known this would be so much of a hassle I would have just filled in the cargo door detail and rescribed it myself. Which I'll probably have to do anyway considering how much work it's taking just to get the pieces to fit together.

This thing better look fantastic when I'm done with it.

Only 11 days left..... hope you'll be able to finish in time