The history is well described on various wikipedia sides so just briefly. The Tu-134 was the twin jet aircraft of the similar construction as French Caravella. It was a direct development of Tu-124 which had been designed under direct order of then head of SSSR, Nikita Khrushchev  (he was impressed by Caravella design).

The official life of the aircraft started on 20 November 1963 with start of the production in 1963 and ended in 1984 with 852 aircraft built. First production airliner had capacity of 56/50 passenger when from 1968 the longer version for 72 passengers was being developed. The first serial Tu-134A first flew by November 1970.

The type was used by Aeroflot, CSA, Interflug, LOT and many other Eastern European and world airlines and there is still number of the aircraft used.      

    In a sturdy box you get two grey plastic spruces, one clear with windows. Altogether some 50 parts. The plastic parts are very fine with nice tiny detail. The fuselage has all the windows but no interior detail so it might be better to paint them from inside with dark colour. There are two versions of frontal cone – clear one of the early version and full one for the later. The stand is provided as well, so if you prefer flight position of the model, you can use it.

In the previewed packing two sets of decals are provided, one original from Zvezda for 2 Aeroflot aircraft, the other is added by Bilek distributor and contains the decals for 4 CSA planes.

The instruction sheet is simple as the aircraft assembly is not difficult either and test fitting showed excellent fit on the mai parts. The colour guidance is provided for Model Master paints including detail bits. The colour guidance for CSA aircraft is done in FSxxxx reference. 

I was ten when I flew from Prague to Frankfurt o/M and due to my mother’s work, was allowed to see the pilots work in this one, so the type is understandably the object of my interest. First model was the 1/100 scale Plasticart kit, I think the lay out of this one is pretty similar but this one, of course, is far more detailed. I know there are two more issues of 1/144 Tu-134 comparable in price and in detail level made by Fly (includes the radar cone of UBK version) and by AZ model that can be used if you desire to have this elegant Tupolev on your shelf. I got this one mainly for the retro CSA decals.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-134

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSA_Czech_Airlines

Martin Dolejsi

October 2012

If you would like your product reviewed fairly and fairly quickly, please contact the editor or see other details in the Note to Contributors.

Back to the Previews Index Page