The Flanker for me has some real
attractiveness about it. Maybe it's the lines, it's size, it's nimbleness in
flight, it's scariness with all those missiles or all of the above wrapped up in
some awesome colors/schemes.
This build is the Academy Su-27 kit built up to be an aircraft from the Ukraine
Air Force 831st fighter regiment, Mirgorod AFB. Those of you searching for a
book on the SU-27 should get Fomin's excellent book. My first inspiration for
this was after seeing the Ukraine Su-27 Demo team's splinter scheme.
Looking in Fomin's book plus seeing shots of a UB in the same scheme got me
hooked. The crest shown in the picture is an authentic UAF one.
The kit with it's flaws as discussed in other postings remains the best in 1:48
scale. Thanks to some conversions out there we can build some of the other
impressive variants of this amazing aircraft. I built up the kit after having
read through articles such as those found at Ken Duffy's Flanker website. I
chose to use the beautiful Cutting Edge cockpit for this build, MV lenses on the
nosewheel gear, some plumbing in the gear wells, resin burners/cans, and
installed a photo-etch HUD. Pretty much the standard mods for the kit. I also
rebuilt thinner fins for the R-27 but that was very painful so I didn't bother
on the R-73... I scooped a set from the MiG-29 kit since they were thinner,
though still thick.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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The splinter camo
scheme was derived using various photos I'd seen of other aircraft as well from
the Flanker 2.5 flight simulator. The simulator has splinter Ukrainian SU27 you
can rotate to see the scheme at many angles.
That allowed me to fill in any gaps the photos I had didn't show.
Paint wise the base color used is Xtracolor X601 Flanker Medium Blue which I
left dry many days to ensure proper curing. For the camo masks I used very low
tack (purple color) painters tape from Lowes. From there the splinter patterns
were cut. I worked slowly spraying small sections at a time leaving ample
time for the paint to dry. The gray is X606 Hind Blue Grey from Xtracolor while
the darker blue is X-14 Sky Blue from Tamiya. The green is Model Master Dark
Green. Flanker engines have alot of discoloration which was one of my tougher
stages. The finish was made up of multiple shades of Model Master metalizer then
coated with thinned blues and black wash.
The decals were trimmed from the Cutting Edge Ukraine Demo Flanker sheet such as
the badges, crests, roundels. The stenciled numbers are Archer dry transfers
which were a joy to apply. All in all I'm very pleased with the outcome and just
love the look. Now I'll see about doing an SU-30MKI canards and all.
Tony
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