Tupolev Tu-144

I'm on the look out for one too Domi. if i find a supply for them i'll let you know. the only VEB kit that i have is an IL62 and that took a while to find. Greg
BTW didn't either NITTO or DOYUSHA do one of these too?.

Anybody do an AN225?
one just flew past my window about 10 minutes ago, no Buran though.

Greg, I saw two on e-Bay today (e-Bay USA) but the asking price was over £20, more than what I'm prepared to pay for what is, having built one earlier in my modeling career, a pretty sh*tty kit... Nitto and Doyusha had Concorde in their ranges, both of them prototypes. I had Nitto's once, but never built it.

The only (I believe) other Tu-144 on the market is Academy's, but it is scaled at 1/360 or something silly like that. It's the Tu-144D rather than the pre-production or the prototype (as VEB's).

As far as VEB is concerned, I've got their Mil Mi-10, plus the Dassault Mercure, a Yak-40 and a 727-100 (all started). Never saw their Il-62 though. Must be a pretty impressive piece of plastic!

Oggy - no, I do not know of any An-225...

it is pretty impresive. i havn't started it yet. mainly because i bought it to go with the TU154 and TU 134 that i had in aeroflot colours, but the 154 got smashed by the missus (an accident whilst cleaning) and the 134 i gave to a mate of mine who is into old airliners so the IL62 is surplus to requirements now and probably won't get built (by me anyways). i did have quite alot of their boing 727s. i was nosying in an everything for a pound shop and he had about 25 of them. i asked how much they are and he said that i can have the lot for £5 because he had had them for years and none of them had been sold and they took up too much space. took me a couple of years to sell them all too . BTW i sold them for a £5 each. Greg

I saw a 1/100 TU-144 at my local hobby shop within the past 3 months, I figue it must be a fairly new release as it claims to have markings for the current "Charger" that NASA helped build.

The manufacturer is German, there is a photo of the finished model on the box but it looks pretty rough with some innacuracies.

I'm not sure if it would be a re issue of the old VEB kit, but I thought you guys might want to know its out there.

VEB kits seem to have been released again by a German company called Adp Models or something like that. Box art is different from the old VEB one but I'm 99% certain it's the same kit. The VEB kit is rough and very basic, with a big problem re. the size of the fuselage windows. It is definitely the Tu-144 prototype. Major, major surgery to turn that into a 'production' Tu-144D...

Academy AC 1699, makes one in 1/360......

You'd need a lot of time to get something decent out of that one, Thyamis... Still, not impossible!

so better stay out of the b-52 as well?
it went with a valkyrie and b-1b the three for 10$

Have only seen the Valkyrie and it's rather a poor model too...

The 1/144 B-52 from Academy is old. It was originaly issued by Crown many years ago and I built it as a kid in the mid 1980s when it was re released by Revell. It shows its age, but it must be worth something or else Cutting Edge wouldn't have bothered with a recent conversion set to turn it into one of the NASA B-52s from the space race. The kit was included in the B-52 kit "Round up" in an FSM earlier this year.

I can only hope the Valkyrie wasn't a re box of the old box scale Lindberg kit.

On the matter of the TU-144, yes, if memory serves, the kit I saw was in adp boxing. A very shallow box with a photo of the finished kit on the front. The photo shows the TU-144 to have its landing gear struts anchored out in the wings so they'd retract in towards the fuselage. However, every picture I've ever seen of the actual airaft has the landing gear anchored in the engine pod and retracting forwards. A major inaccuracy to me.

The Tu-144D had its engine pods relocated outwards under the wings, à la Concorde, and the gear then retracted inside the pods, between the two air ducts leading to the engines. On the prototype and pre-production aircraft, the gear retracted (at least partially) in the wings.

How much are they selling this adp kit, Upnorth?

I believe the price was somewhere between 35 and 40 dollars Canadian. I bit steep if its to be judged by the appearance of things on the box top.

Ouch! Yeah, way too expensive for what it is... VEB / ADP's Tu-134 is selling around £5... I think the demise of Concorde has made anything 'SST' go up again, only price-wise though!

Cant help with the kit DJ but ' Collectakit ' do list some origonal VEB, maybe worth a try ? i have recently seen the origonal Plasticart ads for the TU144 model in an old Aifix mag .

Thanks, Migs, I'll check that!

I found out today that a Tu-144 was also marketed by Entex. The scale could have been 1/144, and it like VEB's kit, it also portrays the prototype... There's one going on e-Bay UK, but again, the asking price is a bit too much for me....