A Happy New Year to all you FSM-ers!
As the clock struck midnight on 12/31/19 this was on the dining room table. I decided my New Year's eve build would be something preposterous, and not many kits can fit that bill compared to Revell's 1/144 An-225 Mriya ("Dream").
I had to move out to the dining room table because the model is just too large to maneuver on my desk/workbench. How big is it? Around 23"x24" Here is a 1/144 MiG-15 for a sobering size comparison.
And this is what is left in the box after the major airframe parts are extricated:
The kit is well engineered, and for the most part, fit is great. I must commend Revell for their novel “tabs + spar” wing and stabilizer attachment method, which seems to work extremely well. One pleasant surprise was that the assembled inner fuselage tube fit perfectly within the outer fuselage halves, something I have never got out of the box. Usually, much savage trimming and sanding of the contact surfaces is required before a gapless fuselage fit is achieved.
The kit offers options for in-flight and landed configurations, and provide parts for "kneeling" landing gear to build the model in the cargo loading position. I will be buttoning my kit up, with the landing gear in the "taxi" configuration.
I had grand fantasies of modding the kit to carry the recently acquired Ark Models Buran shuttle, but I think I will build them as separate models. The Buran may mutate into the BTS-02 atmospheric analog flight article (it had four scabbed-on turbojet engines that permitted runway take-offs), so it would not need a lift to go anywhere!
I am still on the fence about markings. The kit provides livery for the current Ukraine heavy lift scheme, but Begemot is working on a decal sheet for the old Soviet scheme with the thin red fuselage stripe and big old classic Cold War "CCCP" on the wings.