Ratte

I would suggest a combination of brush painting and airbrushing: mask the stripes with regular tape and spray them. Then go over the edges with a rather fine brush, keeping in mind how long an armstroke of a 1/48 bloke would realistically be. Another Idea would be to mask the stripes using some masking fluid slightly thinned with water. Or go completely for a small brush and then sand with some fine sanding sponges afterward to get rid of too much texture from brush painting.

Oh, I stand corrected. AFAIK Metallic Designs makes a K-36D3.5 but I can't say anything about the accuracy.

The Su-30 uses the Zvezda K-36DM ejection seat - same as the Su-27 and the Mig-29. You have plenty of options for these. 3 I can recommend would be Aires (nice detail, fiddly but very detailed photo etch seatbelts), Quickboost (same mould as Aires but with the seatbelts moulded on) or the Eduard Mig-29 late seat (colored photoetch seatbelts but slightly simplified compared to the Aires one, but easier to work with). Shape and resin-wise are all about equal and very nice. Another noteable option would be Quickboost - this is again the Aires seat but with a nice moulded on pilot if you want to g

That's a great idea, thank you very much! There are good sprue pics of the Zvezda kit out there and it includes both old and new style tanks on the sprue and luckily both are split vertically. That should be a very good starting point.

Thanks! Yeah, looking at reference photos it looks like the old tank was round in crosssection whereas the new one is elliptic. Well at least the width should be the same (really not much space left between the intakes) and the new one seems to be only slightly longer. So maybe, if I feel frisky I'll go and try to scratchbuild a new one...

I am about to start GWHs lovely Mig-29Smt and the instructions tell you not to use the provided parts for the centerline fuel tank, only the wing fuel tanks. Now looking at reference photos I see: a) the wing fuel tanks are (almost?) never used (haven't seen any photos with them installed) whereas the centerline fuel tank is worn most of the time and ... b) the centerline fuel tank used by the SMT version seems to differ from the early versions, however it seems hard to find good photographs to really see the difference. So my questions would be: has anyone good reference photos

Hi everyone, I wanted to ask if anyone is aware of a source for the good ol' Mr. Mark Softer in Europe? All I can find is the Neo version and from experience I can tell you it is significantly weaker then the old recipe (it works okish on thinner aftermarket decals but completely fails for thicker decals). I assume that the new recipe is due to some EU regulations. Otherwise how does Tamiyas Mark Fit strong and extra strong compare to Mr Mark Softer as those are readily available in Europe?

It's part E49 - there is an errata to the instructions which you can find at scalemates.com .

Mrvarks paint mix was cooked up before Hasegawa came out with their Raptor who are up til today the only ones who addressed the raptor sheen in their paint call outs: they also went with the metallic paints + regular paints mixing routine. 50% Mr Color C315 + 50% Mr Super Metallics (2)04 stainless steel for the lighter grey and 50% Mr Color C317 + 50% Mr super Metallic (2)03 iron. From my own experience I can tell you this colors and the sheen are spot on.

I can seccond that the color mix suggested by Hasegawa gives a perfect raptor sheen. The kit is nicely detailed and imho aftermarket sets are not really needed (I used an ejection seat by Eduard though) apart from one aspect: The decals in the kit are colorwise really bad. More specifically the light grey used for the tail markings on the kits decals has a distinctive brown hue to it whereas on the original the color is almost the same as the ram coating on the leading edges which is probably more like light ghost grey. Also in my two copies the air command badges were only partially printed.

Hmmm maybe, but I am not 100% sure. I haven’t seen the Quinta Decals in person yet but the combination of a great oob cockpit together with cockpit decals and some careful painting also leads to some spectacular results (see for example hanetos Su-35 build on this site). Great Wall Hobby does a great job in that regards.

Hey @Curt B. I have the new boxing. It has plenty of air to ground ordonance but less air to air missiles (only 4 R-73 and 2 R-77 - no R-27s which were included in the first release). The rest of the plastic is the same as the previous release. Plus it comes with markings for two eggplant schemes and one regular. I read somewhere from Haneto that GWH switched from this release on the decal manufacturer and I can only say that the decals are pretty decent (there have been plenty of complaints about GWH decals in the past). A little bit on the thick side (think slightly thinner then the new Tami

I would say GWH got the color for the radome wrong in the instructions (at least for the eggplant scheme). Neutral grey is a pretty good match - MRP makes a special paint for the radomes and dielectric panels for the Flankers but it is very, very close to Mr Colors neutral grey and comparing with photographs this seems to be a very good match.

Has anyone one of the initial 3000 kits with the bonus tinted canopy and one spare to sell? I managed to crack mine 😩

To bring this while discussion back to modelling issues I have a question: how does the seat belt arrangement on the left relate to the one on the right on the real ejection seat? To me with no knowledge about the flanker it seems like two completely different ones? Does anyone have a reference photograph for the option on the right?