Antonov An-71 Madcap, Amodel 72005

The An-71 is a very unusual aircraft. Based on An-72 cargo plane with engines installed on top of the wings, An-71 featured added third engine in fully reconfigured rear fuselage and radar dish on vertical stabilizer. An-72 T-tail horizontal stabilizers were moved onto the fuselage, therefore extensions at the rear of the engine nacelles were added to more effectively direct air flows. Interesting fact about An-71 is that it has forward swept vertical stabilizer - very rare feature. The model itself was issued by Amodel, but used a forward part of fuselage, wings, engine nacelles and many small parts from An-72 plastic model by Toco. Medium and back part of fuselage and a whole radar dish were made from resin. One important point of the model was that Toco's An-72 had raised panel lines, while resin parts of An-72 had engraved ones. When I bought this model my skills were very far from perfect and it was actually first time when I had a deal with resin in modelism, so I just made it out of the box, with such a weird mixed panel lines. After many years I tried to find Amodel An-71 in shops but it was a limited edition. I painted my An-71 with brush as far as my skills allowed at that time. Last year the model shattered almost completely, into several pieces. Luckily, the resin parts didn't crack, and it was reassembled. I think I'll leave this strange plane on the shelf for history.