I must confess to knowing darn little about this aircraft. What I do know is that it was built in both civil and military versions and also updated to a number of other versions, these being distinguished by having different engines. It was developed to replace piston engined aircraft that were used on shorter feeder airline routes. The prototype first flew in 1960 with passenger service starting in 1963 with Aeroflot. Eventually over 1,100 were built (both civil and military versions) and used by a number of Soviet client states and a few other foreign services.

I'm not sure how many of you are actually familiar with VEB kits. They were the primary model company of what was East Germany and most of its subjects were Soviet in nature. As to the accuracy of the kits, I can only say that it wasn't a major concern of the people who developed these kits. However, most of the ones I've built look very much like what they are supposed to be so they can't be that bad.

The kits are definitely 60's technology regardless of when they were molded. All have raised panel lines and the usual rivets. Detailing in cockpits and wheel wells is non-existent (actually, there aren't any!) and other details are minimal at best. The plastic used is hard and rather brittle. A big problem with most of these kits is the breakage of propeller blades and their subsequent loss from the unsealed box. This happened on this kit. The props and wheels are generally molded in black plastic with grey used for those that are to be 'metal'. Clear parts are thick and a bit on the opaque side. One really nice thing about these throwbacks is that they do include a very nice display stand!

Instructions are printed on a newsprint grade paper and are in German and Russian. Figuring out where parts go isn't a problem since there are so few of them. That is fortunate as there is no exploded view, only a drawing of the completed model with part numbers pointing to the various locations of the bits. As for color info, you are on your own with this one unless you read German or Russian, in which case, there may be something in the instructions about that. The decals are a bit on the yellowed side, but I've used VEB decals before and found the ones I used to be thin, a bit brittle, but otherwise they worked well. What is included are for the East German airline Interflug. There are two metal tubes of something included in the kit. I can only assume them to be paint and/or glue.

I know the kit sounds like a loser, but in reality, they are not all that terrible. I've built a few VEB kits and found them to go together well. The rather odd 1/100 scale is probably a negative factor to many, but these are some odd kits. They are also, in many cases, the only kits of certain aircraft, and that includes the AN-24. I'm not sure if VEB is still extant as I've not seen their kits advertised anywhere for a long time.

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