Aeroflot Tupolev Tu-134

By Chris Nielsen (22 March 2001)

ntil recently, the simming community hasn't produced many decent Russian aircraft. Thankfully that's all changing, with the release of some fine Antonovs, and now this awesome Tupolev Tu-134, courtesy of Victor Stolpyansky. As you can see from the screen shots, the designer has obviously put a lot of work into it. The textures are nicely detailed, and it's got all the newest features, including a round looking fuselage, realistic looking moving parts, and the most bizarre landing gear sequence I've ever seen, but you can trust that it is true to life!

After installing this aircraft, an easy task thanks to the instructions in English, I hopped in for a test flight. The ground handling is excellent, and when takeoff thrust is applied it accelerates at a realistic rate, and rotates easily at about 120 kts.

In the air, the flight dynamics are nothing short of amazing, making it one of my favorite FS aircraft. On my test flight from St. Petersburg to Moscow, it climbed out well, running out of puff a bit crossing flight level 300, requiring a decrease in vertical speed, but flight level 350 arrived in due course, and it settled down to a cruise of 0.75 Mach.

The flight to Moscow was uneventful, the only apparent glitch with the aircraft being a tendency for the autopilot to "chase" the altitude, although it's not a major problem. As the flight progressed, it began to get dark and the lights came on, which on this model is restricted to window lights. It would be nice to have big landing light splashes, but from looking at photos of the real thing, it doesn't have that effect anyway. The big surprise with the lighting became apparent when I began the descent and switched the strobes on, and found that a whole section of fuselage lights up with each strobe...Looks awesome!

Descending into Moscow, the Tu-134 descends at a reasonable rate with minimal thrust, and as when we switched to the ILS frequency, all the runway lights in the fantastic Moscow Airport scenery by Dmitry Olenin came on. As we got closer, it tracked the glideslope well, and only required a slight flare to settle nicely onto the runway. Reverse thrust and brakes are effective, stopping the aircraft quickly. Rolling out, the taxiways are all marked with signs in Russian, but that's easy to work out.

After arriving at the gate, I downloaded a panel and sound for the Tu-134 and installed them. The panel is great, with realistic looking Russian-style gauges, including a airspeed indicator simply marked from 1 to 10! Obviously the Russians didn't copy the Western panels, even if the Tu-134 looks like a Russified DC-9... I don't speak very much Russian, so some of it was a mystery, but using guesswork and native cunning, I worked out what most of the controls do.

The sound set provided is excellent, and after listening to it at max thrust, you begin to understand why the real Tu-134 will not be allowed to land at many major Western airports soon due to excessive noise - it absolutely screams! This is one you can turn up loud and wake the neighbors with!

The aircraft is awesome, and that alone is well worth downloading, but once you combine it with this terrific panel and sound set, it's much, much better. Normally, you would expect a rating out of 100 here, but every reviewer seems to give 95 points, so I won't. Instead, seeing as it's a Russian product, I give it Five Red Stars!

Chris Nielsen
Rant to me here - chrispychicken@mad.scientist.com

Visit Victor Stolpyansky's site arva.nm.ru

Download the Aeroflot Tu-134

Download Moscow Sheremetyevo Airport