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Hi and a Happy New Year to one and all. I finished this one last year, again for Airfix Model World magazine and as both the editor and myself are huge Soviet-era Cold War fans this particular build came as no effort at all. Sadly, as happens all too often Trumpeter managed to drop the ball yet again which is a shame as the kit goes together beautifully. Basically, they've captured the look of the aircraft well but there are several issues with accuracy as well as a few omissions. The MR incorporated a new reshaped nose with flush fitted Shtyk (Bayonet) SLAR and two dielectric panels, (components of the BKR-1 reconnaissance suite) incorporated into its sides. However, this is a problem area on the kit as the upper sides of the nose cone are way too square in section and needed a fair bit of carving and sanding to correct. The underside of the cone is also too shallow missing the characteristic droop of the real thing so this needed to be built up using fine Milliput, luckily there's enough plastic to take the reshaping. For some strange reason, they also neglected to include any of the reece parts that make the Su-24MR, well, a reece aircraft! (though strangely the box art shows all the correct MR parts fitted). It was, therefore, necessary to raid a spare Zvezda MR kit and use those, with some modification as they are a little crude. These consisted of the centreline SRS-14 Tangazh ELINT/SIGINT pod, Efir-1M (Ether) radiation radar monitor pod fitted to the outer right wing station, forward centreline fairing housing the AFA (AP-402M) panoramic camera, AIST (M-152.2) TV system, AFA (100) angled camera fairing beneath the left intake and the IR Zima (Winter) sensor to the right. The centreline fairing needed to be faired into the nose wheel doors and extended at the rear to meet the centreline pod fairing. Oddly Trumpeter included all the equipment and weapons of the strike version which whilst totally unnecessary provided useful parts for the spares box. Another strange decision was to have the wing flaps deployable but not the leading edge ones, (the two sets were always deployed at the same time). I was going to scratch-build these but a looming deadline and other projects precluded this. The wheels were replaced with more detailed items from the Armory range and lead wire used to detail the main gear bay and U/C legs. Replacement wing drop-tanks came from the Zvezda kit as they were more accurate than Trumpeters offerings and had finer surface detail, (correctly shaped fins were made up from plastic card). The pylons were a 50/50 mix of Trumpeter and Zvezda parts. The rest of the kit went together very well, Eduard supplied all the PE including the cockpit and replacement K-36DM seats from True Details were used. A PE HUD was also provided via Armory, the metal nose pitot from Master Models and all paints from the superb AKAN range. Decals came from the Authentic Decals 72-21 'Shark Scouts' sheet mixed with a few kit ones that were missed on the AD sheet. The actual shark mouth was a custom decal I printed from images as the decal sheet offerings were all incorrect for this particular aircraft and designed for the Dragon/Zvezda/Revell kit, which has an overly wide nose section. Weathering came courtesy of the AMMO.MIG range (pastels and Oilbrusher), AK Interactive, (kerosene Leaks and Stains and Aircraft Engine Wash) and Abteilung502 Starship Filth and Raw Umber applied with Matt Effect Thinner. All good fun, just a shame there were so many issues, but then we don't want things to be too easy now...do we! Cheers and thanks for looking, Melchie