After my visit to Poland, where I saw the Antonov An-2 close-up for the first time, I have wanted to model this aircraft. The aircraft is the aviation equivalent of a farm tractor – big, strong and slow. The plane has a metal fuselage  and huge fabric covered biplane wings.

There are several good 3-views on various Russian web-sites. I have picked the most detailed and will be working based on that, as well as my photo collection.

I have discovered a couple of really interesting versions of this airplane. One is the Antonov An-6, which is a high-altitude meteorological aircraft, and the An-2F, which is an artillery aircraft. The An-6 has a seat in the tail of the aircraft, and the An-6 has a huge glass-house half-way, and a tiny boom tail. Both are definitely worth modelling, and I have 3-views for both.

This is the colour-scheme I have chosen for this amazing aircraft.

The An-2 is one of those aircraft where a scale of 1:5 is way too big, and a scale of 1:10 is too small. After some consideration, I have decided on a scale of 1:10:

wingspan: 1,818 m
length: 1,274 m
height: 0,468 m

The approach I will be taking, is one where the wings, and front fuselage remains identical, and the tail can be swapped, to give either an An-2, An-2F or an An-6. The An-2F in particular will require some brain-power. The mid-section of the aircraft has to be stong, yet transparent, and definitely not going to be easy to model.

As always, I started off by scaling the 3-views and then by drawing the side and top views. This time there were no major problems with the 3-views, and it all went really smoothly.

I have now lofted the fuselage, based on the fuselage formers drawn in the 3-view.

After matching the lofted pieces with the flat fuselage top and bottom views, it is quite easy to see where the fuselage formers are off. I will address those problems next, together with the glass at the cockpit area.

I know from experience that the cockpit glass will prove difficult, but for the Antonov An-2, with such a distinct feature, it is essential to get it right.