Bulgarian air charter Tu-154M
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Wings900 Reviews Commercial Aircraft
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Written by Antesyd
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Friday, 05 September 2008 |
Description
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“Bulgarian air charter” was founded in 2000 and performs commercial flights for transportation of passengers, cargo and mail to Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Indian Ocean. The Tu-154M was used mostly for flying charter flights based on contracts with well known foreign tour-operators. The TU-154 was the main workhorse during the first important years of business. But in 2004, when “Bulgarian air charter” bought second hand B737s, the Tu-154 was retired. It was considered far too dirty, uneconomical and unsafe to handle.
But the Tu-154M is still a very beautiful aircraft to watch and an important part of the aviation history. So Herpa made a good choice.
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Model Details
| | Manufacturer:
Airline: Bulgarian air charter
Make: Tu-154M
Model: Tu-154M
Scale:
1:500
Part Number: X
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Model Review
| | Mould and Assembly: Starting with the nose, the shape seems to be almost spot on. Compared to photos of the real aircraft Herpa made a nice job with the nose. The windshield is ok, not perfect, but ok.
The rear section looks very nice and apart from missing some details on the vertical stabilizer, it’s a beauty.
The wing is a beauty too, with the distinctive bulbs to store the main gear in.
But, the wing to fuselage join is a little wide and creates a wide ugly gap. This is a common Herpa issue, so here they have something to work on. As other reviewers commented earlier, other manufacturers manage to solve this issue, so please Herpa.
The undercarriage is in the correct position and looks good as far as I can tell.
The front gear is another story. Even if it seems to be correctly placed it’s to simplified, just a stick with wheels, as an earlier reviewer wrote. Herpa can do much better as we all seen from other moulds.
The hobby needs good models of other aircrafts than B747, A340…
Livery: The paint scheme is not the most colourful in the world, but it nice representation of the time period and the country. The fonts and most shapes look very good and represent the real aircraft in a good way. It is hard to tell if the colour matching is correct as photos I’ve seen of the real aircraft are taken under different light conditions. But I think the green is a little bit darker on the real aircraft and I think all the colours look a little bit too glossy. The reason may of course be that the real aircraft is dirty.
And please Herpa, paint the engines!!! The model looks like a toy when you can almost see through the engines.
Details: Herpas usual lack of details is obvious on this model too. But it doesn’t really matter in this case; the real aircraft is not precisely a Christmas tree… So there are enough details to make this a nice model. The only thing I really miss is the Tu-154 sticker under the cockpit.
But, the window line starts to far back on the aircraft. This makes it look like a cargo bird. It is hard to measure in mm but surely 2-3mm to far aft, compared to the real aircraft.
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Pluses
| | Exotic airline
Exotic airliner
overall appearance
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Minuses
| | Window line issue
Ugly fuselage/wing joint
“See through” engines
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Photos
Editor review: Bulgarian air charter Tu-154M
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
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| Overall rating |
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8.3 |
| Mould and Assembly
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8.0 |
| Livery
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8.0 |
| Details
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8.0 |
| Overall Impression |
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9.0 |
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