Clashmaker.com

Sure thing, when it comes to ‘club member obligations’, no matter what kind of club one cares about, - as a true ‘aficionado’ he or she would normally keep a collection of items reflecting their respective devotion to the ‘idol’ - either a poster, or a piece of cloth - if you lucky enough to get one. Anything in fact would do, and ‘the sky is only the limit’ for your imagination in that case .

Speaking of the airplane lovers’ fetishes, the most appropriate kind of item would be a good scale model. Let’s talk then about providing our ‘RA-85123 Fan Club‘ members with a decent ‘figurine of Herself’, the Tu-154, registered as RA-85123.

I received my RA-85123 model in this April.

It accomplished quite a travel before it landed here at our place, and an itinerary of this travel would make up a good story of itself, and I’m so thankful to those people who were involved into this ‘affair of delivering’ (there’s even been a few persons who I still don’t know the names of!).

Shortly after the Club was set up, I started to be asked by other Club members whether they also could have such a model. I inquired the source in Kuban, and the guy said they had only a limited stock of these models, seems like they ran out of them by now, so the solution would be to find another source, or order from some ‘model manufacturer’.

To all complexities of the issue, this year the plane changed its livery after Kuban leased it out to AviaPRAD, and a good question is whether the Club members want TWO models of the RA-85123 in different colors, or they would be fine with having just one - either in original, or the current color scheme.

Well, I’m working on the matter at the moment, and I would like to share some search results with my fellow Club members.

Technically, you can find a model manufacturer, no problem. And they can build a small series of a desired model, just name the original. For example, right now I’m in communication with a small business in Kiev, Ukraine, and what they are offering is a terrific example of the modeling art, may I say so. Just have a look at that:

Here’s a couple of Tu-154 models, RA-85715′ clones , they are representing an original plane that belongs to ‘KMV Avia’

Pictured below are exactly the models of three types (Tu-134, Yak-42, Tu-154) I used to fly since the beginning of my flying career in 1983

Models’ finish is amazing, they even got a riveting job on surfaces.

Models are made of fiberglass composite, at 1:72 scale, they are rigid and durable. Alex, the guy who runs this model business in Kiev says he would be able to set up a serial production of up to 15 models a month, and of course, they’ll be in the customer’s desired colors.

But the prise!

On my, I wish they had a sort of ‘financing’ or ‘leasing’ options in place for buyers! Each model will set you back a ‘coupla bucks’, oh, pardon - ‘Euros’ ( I don’t even have a symbol for this currency on my Mac , and I’ll advise the figure to all Club members by personally posting to them) plus shipping, the cost of which may be pretty high for deliveries ordered from Ukraine.

But the models are very nice, - aren’t they? I’ll try to negotiate, to get a ‘valued customer discount’, to leverage negotiations with an offer of some ‘Club member benefits’ in exchange, etc

And I need your opinion as well, whether we are going to ‘pay through the nose’, or the price is good.

looking forward to hearing from you,

Yours,

Clash

P.S. In one of the next posts I’m going to talk about another model I once had my hand on.