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1/48 Su-27UB Blue 52 Polar Flanker


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Ok here we go. BIG updates.

A lot of major steps were accomplished. First up, I painted and clear coated the Alamo’s. They’re ready for decals and finishing.

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Bang seats. Lots of color PE work and some healthy dry brushing.

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Instrument panels! Flat coated with AK matte then some Future in the dials.

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Repainted the upper fuselage inside and added some tiny bits of PE that will be hidden. :P

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Edited by nicholassagan
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The pits!! Painted with Tamiya light blue with some drops of white, yellow/green ejector rail, silver and black dry brushing, flat green foot boards, added stick PE and lastly some AK engine oil/streaking for grime. Final touch was adding the instrument panels and seats.

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Before adding the lower fuselage a little bit of resin trimming was needed as well. The rear edge of the front tub and the front edge of the nose gear bay get in the way of one another so I cut a piece out of the latter.

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The main wheel bays are also too tall to fit so I CAREFULLY used a Dremel to thin out the areas on the upper fuselage and the tops of the wheels bays. The plastic got a little too thin and warped ever so slightly. Chalk it up to a well-worn bird…

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Regardless, the pits look good in their place.

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Another anticipated issue with the fit of the lower fuselage is the radome. You can see there are a number of issues along the seams, the least of which is the fit of the unaltered plastic. I did some trimming and added some splints.

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A final layer of putty will help smooth everything together. Some lines will need to be rescribed but ce la vie.

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Figured I’d also build the vertical stabilizers while the putty set.

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Once the lower fuselage was fit, some of the other seam issues became apparent. Luckily the Aires burner cans are designed so they don’t have to be installed along with the fuselage joining. I’ll be able to cut out some open panels and detail a bit while cleaning up the tail seams.

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There is also some work needed along the trailing edge where the stabilizers meet.

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There was still some warpage issues with the wings that was slightly mitigated by adding the braced lower wings.

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Again, there are some gaps at the wing root that need to be addressed.

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You can see adding the lower braced wings helped a touch with the warpage, but there is still some angling issue. The wings should be perfectly horizontal.

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SOO using my jig and some bottles for weights, I hope that after a few days like this the proper angle will be there.

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Now for the intakes…Since the wheel bays are a bit taller than the kit allows for a small bulge occurs across the length of the intakes, so some clamping and delayed glueing was in order. The ended up aligning pretty will with the lower exhaust sections, but there were a few gaps.

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A thin sheet of styrene helped with one side and putty overall will help with both.

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Overall though, she’s looking like a Flanker. :)

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Nicholas,

I'm truly impressed with your resin modifications, and all the extra work needed to fit, and blend them in. None of those gaps, and voids seemed to daunt you, yet I can assure you that if was me, I'd be popping one antacid after anther. Then you'll be spending quite a bit of time re-scribing. And here I am concerned about some minor scribing necessary on my F2A-3 after reworking the tail cone section.

Joel

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Awesome, great progress! You really have the patience of a saint :thumbsup:

Watching this makes me really sad that I don't have time to work on my Flanker at the moment :(

Cheers

Markus

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Nicholas,

As always, your updates are excellent and show off your skills and more importantly, as others have stated, your limitless patience! Nice stuff mate.

Just one thing to keep in mind that I noticed in your pics if I may. Those louvers are pretty fragile and too much back and forth will see them snap off. I had three of them come off and had to go fishing in the intakes to try and retrieve them. I ended taping a piece of paper over them just so I wouldn't massacre the rest of them during general handling.

Keep it up mate!

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This is great work and great progress!

Really impressive.

The cockpit especially seems very nice and realistic.

But for the cockpit glasses, I would have used 2k auto gloss coats instead of future. Future shrinks alot when it dries and it does not give that glass effect well.

Recently, I used 2 component auto gloss coat for creating glass effect on an F-4 instrument panel. I just mixed a very tiny amount of it and applied with a cocktail stick. The auto gloss coat has very high capability to stick to vertical surfaces, does not run over or under different panels, gives a nice glass depth and it dries rock hard and clear as glass. Shrinkage is minimal but it would be better to apply it two or three coats.

regards,

salih

Edited by airea
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  • 3 weeks later...

With the new baby and all I'm pretty sure this won’t get done in time for the SMA contest deadline…but I’m still going to plug along when I can. And I'm OK with that. :)

Finished the Alamos.

Assembled the flaps, still need to trim the rods.

Started the pylon work.

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Edited by nicholassagan
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Nicohlas,

Those Alamos missiles are truly outstanding. Super detailed and perfectly painted. And a very nice start to the pylons. I still remember what it was like when our son was born. Sometimes I went back to work early or stayed late, just to get some much needed rest.

Joel

Edited by Joel_W
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  • 9 months later...

The big spring contest on the other forum is firing up soon and one of the categories is Shelf Queen! LOL I'm hoping I can reign this one in in time :P Our daughter is now just over 9mo and I've been able to find some more time here and there for projects. I'm REALLY itching to get back to this though. However, I might just tackle a 1/72 version of this bird just to practice with the painting...

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  • 4 weeks later...

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