With room for nearly 200 passengers, the Il-62 was Aeroflot’s premier intercontinental jet from the mid-1960s through the 1980s. Many of the almost 300 built were sold to airlines in Soviet-aligned nations.
I have been a fan of the rugged four-engined jetliner for as long as I’ve been able to appreciate airliners. More than once, I toyed with the idea of buying the VEB Plasticart Il-62 I saw in my local hobby shops in the late 1980s. But I could never get past the sense of dread I got from the rough plastic.
Fast-forward 30 years, and I — and, judging from comments on the Internet, a lot of other airliner modelers — have gotten my wish. Zvezda’s 1/144 scale Il-62 may be the best scale airliner I’ve built. The kit represents the later 1l-62M, with more-powerful engines.
Molded in medium gray plastic, the parts feature ultra-fine engraved panel lines, doors, and vents, and the attachment points are small. I found few ejector-pin marks in areas visible on the finished model.
Small parts, like landing gear and trailing edges, look scale-thin.
The cabin windows are molded open, and clear inserts are provided for the glass. The windshield part incorporates part of the fuselage, making it easier to fit and blend. Zvezda’s clear plastic is more flexible than most other manufacturers’, which is both a blessing and a curse. You can flex it without damage during installation — handy in tight spots — but it doesn’t polish out well, unfortunate if you scratch it. I didn’t use the cabin windows, preferring to fill the holes with Deluxe Material Glue ’n’ Glaze after painting.
As the second of Zvezda’s “Ultimate Kit” series, the Il-62 features a detailed cockpit and a bunch of building options. The logically presented instructions show three building versions: in-flight clean, on the ground with the cabin door open, and in-flight at takeoff or landing with the gear down and flaps extended. Optional gear legs with extended oleos are provided for the latter; a stand supports the in-flight options. To illustrate, I built a cross between the second and third options: The airliner is on the ground with the door open and the flaps extended (not standard practice).
After painting the cockpit components (the bright turquoise panels pop through the small windshield panes) and landing-gear bays, I glued the fuselage together. I needed almost no filler on the seam, but there are minor sink marks above the locators on the fuselage. I easily repaired most of them with putty and sanding, but one pair falls right between the ADF antennas. Rather than trying to carefully sand around them, I recommend replacing them with thin styrene after cleanup.
The wings and horizontal stabilizer were no problem. Note that the entire tail assembly is designed to move on top of the fin. I left both assemblies off for painting.
The engines feature stator blades with a hint of fan behind for the front. At the back, an insert represents the mixer and cone. The intakes for both twin-engine pods are molded as a single piece incorporating the intake all the way to the stator part. This eliminates awkward filling after assembly. There are a sprue stub and a mold seam inside each ring, but 400-grit sandpaper wrapped around a paintbrush handle smoothed the intakes in minutes.
Callouts refer to Zvezda and Humbrol colors. I painted the model with Tamiya spray-can light gray (AS-12) and white primer, then airbrushed Pledge FloorCare Multi-Surface Finish for decals. I masked and airbrushed the natural-metal leading edges silver.
Five marking options — four in classic Aeroflot blue-and-white livery, and a single airframe from the Russian ministry of emergency situations in an attractive blue and bright red scheme. I applied the Aeroflot decals with the Olympic titles; the thin decals went down smoothly, a blessing given the number of stencils. Unfortunately, the cheatlines don’t quite line up with the molded windows and the white printed below them is a little yellow.
The landing gear and a couple of antennas were added in the final assembly. I spent about 15 hours on the airliner, mostly masking and painting. It looks right, although the molded eyebrow windows seem a bit too tall.
Would I build another? In a heartbeat, especially given the colorful liveries Il-62s wore. I recommend this kit to fans of airliners, especially to break up the long lines of Boeings and Airbuses. Zvezda has set a new standard for the genre, and I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Note: A version of this review appeared in the March 2015 FineScale Modeler.