history

The Ilyushin 62M was the longest serving version to the IL-62 Jet airliner. Conceived in 1960 by Ilyushin as the successor to the popular turbo-prop IL-18 and with capacity for almost 200 passengers and crew, the Il-62 was the world's largest jet airliner when first flown in 1963. The Il-62 and the British Vickers VC10 are the only commercial airliners with four engines fitted in twinned/paired nacelles by the sides of, and beneath, a "T" shaped tail. The Il-62M variant (first flight in 1971, introduced in 1973) They were first used by the DDR Interflug Company 16 of them at the time. Three of them were purchased to the Ost German Airforce and after 1990 they served in the Bundesluftwaffe. Which is the subject of the ICM IL-62M 1/144th scale.

Contents

ICM have packaged this kit in a very sturdy box with good art work. On opening the box you find one instructional booklet and one large bag. Inside the bag is a small bag with the clear parts including cockpit screen and interior windows.
Three white moulded plastic sprues with the main fuselage, engines, wheels, engine fans on one and two sprues with the lower and upper halves of the wings.

Review

First Impressions
Opening the box you have a white moulded plastic sprues, there is next to no flash. I put this as I spent a while going over the sprues looking. For those of you that buy online the box is sturdy in design, there are a number of smaller parts on the mouldings that could cause some issues when trying to remove them from the sprues.

Undercarriage
The undercarriage has some nice detail on the legs and some very small parts on here. Due to the size of the kit the wheels are well rounded though could be better in detail.

Fuselage
The main fuselage is in two halves with some nice crisp details with some fine recess panel lines and nice lines of porthole windows. I really like the detail on this mould, ICM like most of the companies are now producing some nice mouldings in there kits.

Engines
The engines although basic are again crisp. The housings has nice recessed panel lines again and the jet fans and nacelles again have crisp detail.

Wings
Flight surfaces for the wings come in three parts one complete lower wing that joins onto the bottom of the fuselage. There is some very fine recessed panel lines and some raised surfaces, all of which are on the real aircraft. Injector pin marks on the underside though are not to bad. Two upper wings that fit in the fuselage and onto the bottom wing again with some nice recessed panel lines and some nice surface details. The tail plane is nice and there is a moveable rudder which is a nice touch on ICM's part.

Clear parts
The glazing is nice and clear, with the cockpit glazing is particularly nice with small bits of detail, you then have the porthole glazing looks like it will fit quite well, though any fit issue with this could be resolved with Micro kristal klear. As a bonus the plane comes with a large frosted clear stand for display.

Instructions and decals
The instruction booklet is very nice with both colour and black and white instructions making it nice and easy to follow without to many problems. The decals look nice, colourful but a little thick. There are decals for two different planes one being the Interflug Company Germany in 1990, the second being German Airforce in 1992. The instruction booklet has two colour pages of the aircraft giving clear detail on colours for both aircraft.

Conclusion

If you are into Airline model kits then I do feel this is a great addition to your collection, the detail is nice, recessed panel lines, crisp mouldings, looks like it could fit together nice and easy. I particularly like the instruction booklet that I found to be very colourful and easy to follow. Some injector pin marks may need to be dealt with during the build but nothing to bad.

For further detail on this ICM kit : www.icm.com.ua