Eastern Express 1/144 Tupelov Tu-334 By Chris Banyai-Riepl

Overview

The aviation industry is far from dead in the former Soviet Union and to accentuate that point several new airliners are showing up. The Tupelov design bureau is at the forefront of this recent spate of aircraft, building off its existing customer base currently flying the Tu-134 and Tu-154. Designed to replace the aging Tu-134, the Tu-334 is capable of carrying 72 to 126 passengers. Teaming up with Rolls Royce, Tupelov is able to offer this plane with the excellent Rolls Royce RR715 engine, giving the Tu-334 excellent performance while at the same time providing a modern and reliable engine.

The Tu-334 first flew in 1999 and has flown many, many test flights to date. I’m not sure when it is schedule to enter service or with whom (most likely Aeroflot to start, though), but it is sure to provide solid competition with Boeing and Airbus in the narrow-body airliner category.

The Kit

Eastern Express’ kit of the Tu-334 comes molded in white plastic, with clear parts provided for the windscreen and cabin windows. A total of thirty-seven parts fit inside the somewhat sturdy box, two of which make up the display stand. The instructions are decent and provide eight steps. No decal placement diagram is included, so you will have to refer to the boxtop artwork and the side-panel profile for placement purposes. In addition, you could go to airliners.net and do a search on the Tu-334. That site has several photos of the plane, many of which will be useful in both placing decals as well as painting the model.

Construction is quite simple and follows most other airliner kits out there. The instructions make no mention of adding weight to the nose, and while this kit might not need any I would place a bit in there just to be sure. While the cabin windows are included in clear plastic, a quick test fit shows that a bit of work is needed to get them to fit just right. If you are more of a decal window type of modeler, I would recommend relying on your usual window-filling technique instead of using the clear parts. The windscreen also needs a bit of work to get to fit right, but after a bit of sanding, a snug fit should result. The nose radome is molded as a separate piece, thus saving you from the potential of sanding off the raised strips while fixing fuselage seams.

The wings and tailplanes are very straightforward. The wing is split into three pieces, with the lower center section incorporating a section of the lower fuselage. The rest of the wing is made up from two pieces, each providing the rest of the lower wing as well as the entire upper wing half and the winglets. The trailing edges could use a bit of thinning down, but they won’t need much. The panel lines, like those found throughout the rest of the kit, are recessed, but you will want to run over them with a scriber to even them out and also make them a bit deeper so they won’t disappear under primer. The tailplanes are molded as one piece and also include the top of the vertical fin.

The engines are quite good in this kit. The majority of the engine pylon is molded with the engines themselves, leaving only a small part on the fuselage sides. The engines themselves are split into upper and lower halves, with a separate hot section and fan blade piece sandwiched in between. The best part, though, is the separate intake rings. I haven’t test-fitted these yet, but if they fit well this will make for a very easy job of painting these parts silver.

The landing gear is fairly simple in this kit, but then again it’s fairly simple in real life. There are pairs of wheels for all three struts and once in place and on the plane there really isn’t too much to add here. The gear does a great job of capturing the low stance of this plane. The wheel doors are a bit thick and probably could be replaced with thin plastic card or even brass. This is true for just about any 1/144 airliner kit, though.

The decals are well printed and are for the prototype aircraft in Tupelov’s house livery. They have a flat sheen to them and I don’t know how well they are in terms of application, but they are in excellent register and provide all the basic details.

Conclusion

With Minicraft and Revell-Germany covering US and European airliners quite well, it is exciting to see Eastern Express jump into the ring with planes from Russia. I’m probably going to build this one up and get it primed for now and wait for a true airline livery to show up. I’m sure that we’ll be seeing this plane in service soon and hopefully there will be some interesting schemes applied to it.