The workhorse of the Russian bomber fleet

A few months ago Kenneth Vaessen unveiled his 1/36 scale model of a Russian Tu-22M3. The reason why I didn’t blog it back then is that his pictures were taken against a fairly dark background. However, he has now posted this newly edited version.

Tupolev Tu-22M3 Backfire-C 1

The Tu-22M3, named the Backfire-C by NATO, is a supersonic bomber developed in Soviet times. The Russian military went through rough times after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its Backfires are getting long in the tooth, but they are still impressive-looking machines. Kenneth has done a fine job recreating the sleek look. His model is 1.17 m long (almost 4 ft), is beautifully shaped and has many working features such as working variable geometry wings, a retractable undercarriage, opening cockpit canopies and an internal weapons bay. There don’t seem to be all that many LEGO builders willing to tackle scale models of military aircraft, certainly not compared to, say, Star Wars models or mecha, so it is always a great pleasure to welcome a new member to the flock, certainly one who produces models this good.

2 comments on “The workhorse of the Russian bomber fleet

  1. helloearthling

    This is a beautiful plane.

    Regarding the photo quality stuff; as a reader, personally I would be very happy to see more posts without complete top-notch photography. At the moment, this blog almost exclusively features builders who are brilliant builders and photographers, which is quite a tight group of people. I’d love to see a wider range of builders who might only be B grade photographers rather than the A+ requirement at the moment. Generally, I just like seeing new names on here.

    But I could be alone in this, and I totally respect that you guys get to run the blog however you want.

  2. Ralph Post author

    ^I can see your point. I sometimes see very nicely built models that I would perhaps like to blog, but feel compelled to skip because they are poorly photographed. However, I don’t think you have to be a brilliant photographer to have your model blogged here, nor a wizard with photo-editing software. Just making sure that everything is in focus and that the model is well-lit and placed in front of a neutral backdrop doesn’t take all that much extra effort. I’m hardly the world’s best photographer myself and for a long time used to photograph my models on my kitchen table with the kitchen wall as the backdrop. That didn’t stop my models from being blogged here (before I was a contributor).

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