Revell Antonov An-124 Ruslan

Who do you call if you have to move 165 tons of stuff from one end of the globe to another? Call one of several specialist cargo companies flying the Russian equivalent of the C-5 Galaxy: the An-124.Revell includes an abundance of options in its new heavy lifter. The kit can be built with the gear up for in-flight display, gear down, or gear in the kneeling position with the forward and rear loading doors open or closed. You'll need to decide which loading configuration you'll want before you start to build the model. 

There's enough derail inside the cargo bay to satisfy most builders. It's built up with two decks and bulkheads, and the sidewalls have excellent rib derail. Everything fits and provides a sturdy inner layer for the fuselage.

I built my Ruslan in the wide-open and kneeling position. The fit of the landing gear - indeed, the en tire kit - was exceptional. No filler was required, and the flying surfaces fit well enough to be finished separate from the fuselage and added after painting. Since I was building my Ruslan nose down, 1 didn't think of adding nose weight, although Revell recommends 50 grams. Once the interior was completed and installed, the build progressed rapidly.

The wings and stabilizers are elegantly simple. The engines include the now-standard nose ring integrally molded with the intake.

A sturdy hinge allows the nose to stay open. The seemingly fragile mounting system for the struts that support the jet as it's kneeling held up well. Eventually, I had to face preparing and painting the wheels - all 24 of them. The landing-gear struts are well detailed, but I had trouble interpreting the drawings on how the upper main-gear doors were to be assembled - they are folded at an angle, and then placed so they sit over the top of the landing gear. Photos on the Web came to the rescue.

The lift struts for the many doors and loading ramps were fiddly and required extra care to install. The rear ramp had to have its mounting holes opened up to accept the lift struts. Careful assembly is also required to ensure the nose ramp touches the ground at the proper angle. All the ramps, doors, and wheels went on after painting, of course. I used Testor flat white and Italian blue-grey for the main colors, with Russian marker red added to the wingtips. Revell's massive decal sheet includes markings for Russian Air Force, Aeroflot, and two private cargo haulers. The first decaling step was adding stencils. I scoured the sheet for "52x" for several minutes before I realized that it meant there were 52 of this particular stencil to be added to each wing!

Revell clearly points out the order for adding the colorful trim decals, but something went wrong when I reached the separate nose. The nose stripes don't reach or match the angle of the rear edges. All the other decals went on fine with setting solution.

Much of the 22 hours I spent on the model were devoted to decaling. lf you're good at decaling - and have 20" of shelf space - you'll want to add this monster to your collection.