Trumpeter 1/72 scale Tu-160 "Blackjack" By Bill Osborn

Introduction

I hoped someone would produce a kit of the –160 ever since Trumpeter came out with the “BEAR”. I have wanted the TU-95 for a long time, and when a good one came along I was first in line at the hobby shop. The model is still waiting to see a drop of glue. This was not the case with the -160, as soon as I got the box home the work began. One thing I’ve learned from this model, is, BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR YOU MIGHT GET IT. This thing is huge; it was a real hassle working on it in my confined workroom.

I’m not going to bore you with a description of the parts, most of you have seen Trumpeter kits and know the quality and quantity. The three things you need to know before you start sticking parts together are, READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, STUDY THE INSTRUCTIONS, and OBEY THE INSTRUCTIONS. Just because you’re an accomplished model builder don’t think you can start slathering on the glue because you know where all the parts go. I had to cut several sub-assemblies apart when I tried to mate them to other assemblies.

Construction

As with most models, I started with the front office. As with the rest of the kits from this line, there are well done photo-etch parts for all the instrument panels. I dutifully painted them and glued them to the already painted cockpit. There are four stations in the cockpit, so each location has a full load of equipment. After getting all the seats and consoles glued in, the cockpit sidewalls go on, there is a strange wavy part that fits between the sidewalls. This was weird until I put the aft bulkhead on, there are two small parts that go on the panel, I’ll give you a hint, it’s white and has a hole in it. That’s right, it’s the head. Some times we get too much detail. It’s nice to know that all this detail is there and you’ve spent so much time painting it all up nice and pretty, because when it goes in the nose section you can’t see a blame thing. I didn’t even use the two aft seats.

The next step is to mount the nose gear to the under side of the cockpit floor. I’m not too fond of this, as I tend to snag things that are protruding from a model, which leads to bad words. But, it must be done because; the gear must fit between the gear well sides. These parts need to be painted before they are installed due to the fact that the gear struts and wheel well are different colors. The best way to work this out is to tape the well together with the struts in place and glue the gear assembly together and then remove the assembly after it’s set. There are details molded onto the sidewalls and bulkheads, so it will be easier to paint the well and details while every thing is flat.

The next projects are the bomb bays, they are built up like the nose gear assembly. The rotary launchers are made up of 14 parts, and they must be painted before the missiles are glued on. The color call out is 80% silver and 20% gold. I tried several different kinds of paint but couldn’t get the color to come out, so I went the old stand-by Alclad, it may not be the right shade but it’s sure pretty. Now, at this point I made my first mistake. I built up the missiles I was going to use, (two types are furnished). However I didn’t mount them to the launcher spindle. Remember I said to study the instructions? Well I didn’t. The bomb bays are assembled like Lincoln logs. All the parts are inner locking, and once the bays were glued together I couldn’t get my fat fingers and the missiles into them. Maybe at that point I should have thought about closing the bay doors.

Moving right along, the next sub-assemblies are the main gear wells. I have not mentioned yet that they’re a lot of small details to be added to all these assemblies that a good modeler will want to paint and weather and really detail. I don’t do much of that, too lazy I guess. By this time, there are getting to be a lot of sub assemblies laying around and back in that big box all those small parts came out of. The next items to be attacked are the engine inlets. This is where I found an error on the drawings. The instructions call out that the inside of the inlets are to be painted white. The color pictures in my reference book shows them to be gloss black. (RED STAR Vol. 9 by Yefim Gordon). All of these sub assemblies need to be painted before they are glued together. Sometimes this doesn't’t make much sense but it all works out for the best. The exhaust cans were assembled at this time, and painted with various shades of Alclad, these are simple to put together and consist of six parts each.

Now we come to the wings. There are three choices for you to chose from, Full sweep, open with flaps and slats up, fully forward with flaps and slats up, or full open with everything hanging. The only way you can be correct with the wings at full sweep is to mount it on a stand, or hang it from the ceiling. The wings are never swept on the ground, as the aircraft will over balance and go boom on its tail. I chose to open the wigs and let every thing hang. There are 20 tabs to mount the flaps and slats to the wings, each one is different and must be mounted in the correct order. So if you are the guy who clips off all the little parts, and I know a few who are, you will be in a world of hurt when it’s time to put on those hangy down things. There is a large tab that will let you sweep the wings, but it should be glued in the proper position, as the wing geometry changes as the wings sweeps.

OK now that we have the small stuff done it’s time to see if it all fits inside the body. There are four main body parts, upper and lower nose and upper and lower main body sections. The cockpit is glued to the lower nose section, and then the lower nose is glued to the lower main skin. The two bomb bays are put in place along with the pre-painted turbine faces. The wheel wells also are installed now. Care should be taken to get the bays and wheel wells facing the right way, I managed to get one of the bomb bays reversed. But if you keep quiet nobody will know. At this time I had a brainstorm, (actually, it was just a small drizzle), since this thing is so large with the wings open I decided to see if I could make the wings removable. I sanded down the wing tab box on the lower skin until it was just a little higher than the tab on the wing and glued a thick chunk of sheet plastic on top, so that the wing will slide in and out. You know what? It works, not all my ideas don’t work.

The time has come to glue the two upper skins together. The nose section doesn’t match up with the aft skin real well, and needs to be sanded down a little bit, which means some lines need to be rescribed. There also some matching problems with the wing and body fit. Nothing major just requiring some filler and sanding. What do you know it’s starting to look like an airplane.

The next assemblies are the main landing gear; here is another place I screwed up. You get two very nice metal parts that are sandwiched between two heavy main strut halves, I mismatched these parts at least twice before I got them right. There are also a couple of links that go in between the two halves, but don’t glue them just yet; there are more parts to fit on the same struts. After getting the gear struts together, they are mounted into the main body, by way of two tapered tangs that fit reinforced holes in the forward wheel well bulkhead. A dry fit and some adjusting may be needed, as my gear came out a little pigeon-toed. There are a few struts and rods that need to be added to finish the gear assembly, however, if they are installed it makes for one heck of a masking job to paint the body. Looking back, it would have been easer to paint the area around the wheels before putting the gear in. With the gear on I thought it would be a good idea to be sure all the wheels were on the ground. Since the main gear trucks hinge to allow the wheels to remain on the ground as the aircraft rotates I did not attach the oleo that restricts the truck movement. This idea of mine didn’t turn out, as it proved to be very hard to install the oleo with the wheels installed. I did manage to get all the tires to sit on the ground at the same time, until I stuck the wings and tail surfaces on. Even with the six wheel bogeys, the nose came off the ground. Since there were no openings in the nose to add weights, I had another flash of insight; I cut off the noses of six of the missiles I had not yet tried to add to the bomb bays and added enough lead to hold the nose down (another flash in the pan). Save yourself the trouble and weight to the nose section first.

Now you can put the engine inlets on. Check fit the inlets before you add the glue, because the inlets are built to fit the body contour. Add the inboard nacelle covers, and move on to the tail assembly. The vertical is in four parts, the lower vertical and the upper part that is a full span rudder. I did not glue the rudder on as I take models to shows and none of my boxes are big enough. If you don’t have that problem, do not glue the rudder inline with the vertical. When the aircraft is on the ground the rudders are canted off to one side, most of the time to the right. The full flying horizontals mount on a rather small rotating rod that is sandwiched between the two vertical halves. This rod is short and not too strong allowing the horizontals to sag span wise. I replaced the rod with a longer brass tube. The horizontals need to sag about ten to fifteen degrees when on the ground.

Painting

I think the hardest part of building this model was the painting. I saw a picture of a natural metal –160 from this years nat’s, it looked real good and the builder has my congratulations on a job well done. I went with the simple all white scheme. It should have been a snap, yea right, I had the wings and tails off, but it didn’t help much. The model is so large I kept bumping into things as I moved around. The decals went on with no problems, I might have done a Ukrainian bird but only Russian markings were provided.

Conclusion

I would really like to do another one, but that’s very much out of the realm of possibility. There is no way I could get two of these monsters in my display cases.