Re: AIR 1/48 Su-27UB Blue 52 Polar Flanker
Ok here we go. One BIG update.
A lot of major steps were accomplished. First up, I painted and clear coated the Alamo’s. They’re ready for decals and finishing.
Bang seats. Lots of color PE work and some healthy dry brushing.
Instrument panels! Flat coated with AK matte then some Future in the dials.
Repainted the upper fuselage inside and added some tiny bits of PE that will be hidden.
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.
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.
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…
Regardless, the pits look good in their place.
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.
A final layer of putty will help smooth everything together. Some lines will need to be rescribed but ce la vie.
Figured I’d also build the vertical stabilizers while the putty set.
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.
There is also some work needed along the trailing edge where the stabilizers meet.
There was still some warpage issues with the wings that was slightly mitigated by adding the braced lower wings.
Again, there are some gaps at the wing root that need to be addressed.
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.
SOO using my jig and some bottles for weights, I hope that after a few days like this the proper angle will be there.
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.
A thin sheet of styrene helped with one side and putty overall will help with both.
Overall though, she’s looking like a Flanker.
