1/72 Tu-143 Reys

[Floki]

They look very interesting, like others here I have never heard of these.

[Scruffy]

Hmmm... never seen or heard of them. Unmanned Aerial rockets, huh? What is their purpose? To take photos? How do they land safely? Are there landing gears on them or do they deploy parachutes?

I love seeing unusual kits not seldom seen and built.

They are reconnaissance drones that were in service from the early '70's to mid / late 90's. They were launched from a wheeled launch vehicle and flew a preprogramed course. They had interchangeable nose pallets that carried two still cameras, or three tv/movie cameras that were able to transmit in real time via a data link to the reconnaissance support vehicle that accompanied the unit (this also had a photo lab to process film and a briefing room). A third option was a plain nose that had sensors that could "sniff" for radiation, though those seemed to be seldom fitted . After flying their mission they returned to a preprogramed safe area and the engine cut out and a parachute deployed to slow them down and control their decent to the ground. They had a tiny set of landing gear that deployed and just before touchdown a pair of retro rockets fired to further slow the decent (them Russians do love their retro rockets, they use 'em to slow down everything from airdropped cargo pallets to space capsules ). A flatbed recovery vehicle with a bed mounted hydraulic crane would retrieve the drone ( it could carry two drones at a time) and it would be refurbished and reused up to ten times. Of this design, this was the smallest and most commonly used, however Tupolev built two that were much larger, fighter jet size UAV's that had a similar appearance.

I too like unusual kits of unusual subjects, so can probably find a few more kicking around here

[BlackSheep214]

Thank you for the history lesson. Wow... who knew?

[Scruffy]

No problem, nice to put my history degree to use for something.....researching plastic models

[BorgR3mc0]

Cool stuff, you don’t see a lot of drones build.

[Floki]

Thanks for the history lesson.

[Duke Maddog]

This is interesting and something I would love to add to my collection. Maybe someday. Meanwhile, this is going to be fun to follow.

[Thomas_M]

What a weird looking thing! First I thought this one to have its roots in a Japanese manga...

[Scruffy]

Worked on the nose pallets, the kit provides a reasonable facsimile of the camera faces and lenses, and once painted provide a very reasonable amount of detail seen through the small windows in the nose.



The nose sections went together very well, more time was spent on the painting than the actual building.



Also worked on the seams, really mostly a couple of small gaps on the bottom wing to fuselage join, and these were mostly down to me not truing up the opening for the wing before adding cement

[LyleW]

Nice progress!