haneto

So no one's interested in this thread on a British forum? Okay, whatever. I just post the left progress to terminate this built. So I first finished camo spray. Both color and camo pattern on PLAAF scheme is different than RusAF, which has been fully reflected on the newest GWH S4810 kit so I'll save my words here. As you can see I have built the radar so I want to show it with radome not glued. I added 3 micro maganets inside the radome and also beneath radar part, to assure radome hold tighter. And I emphasize again: the lightning stripes on Su-35 radome are recessed and silver!

So almost another month passed an what did I do? 1. I scratch built the PLA Flanker pilot for the diorama and made resin cast copies for sale. 2. I finished checking the PLAAF decal design for the upcoming limited edition kit, and am now waiting for the decal printing for my built utilization. 3. I painted 2 exhaust nozzles. Since many people ask "how to paint Flanker nozzles/engine naccels", I summarized the "how to" by 18 steps. It took me about 1 week to finish 2 nozzles by 1 hour per working day before sleeping + 2 whole weekend days. To be continued...

Thanks for your encouragements. PLA Su-35 camo pattern and color is different than RuAF ones. Will explain in next update round.

Hi Erik Sorry for my delay since I did not access to the forum for a while. Regarding your questions, 1. So far still not too much info available, unfortunately...sorry for that. 2. Yes same on both Russian and Chinese airframes since that was the factory standard painting. 3. I checked the Russian Su-35 photos and found they are the same color with Chinese ones. So I believe again, that was the factory standard painting. Yufei

Actually I almost finished camo on main parts, but now pending to Chinese font stencils which are under designing. I cannot paint other colors on other details since I need to spray the semi gloss surface once decals attached, to make different surface texture on the fuselage again, like what I did on missiles. So let me save the explanation to next update. To be continued......

Under some aspect you can find the different surface texture on the missiles. Gloss, semi gloss, flat or metalic This shows how good a modeller has spent time to learn and understand the missile in real life. Meanwhile a great fun from modelling as well.

The deadly R-73, no second to AIM-9X even much aged.

Not a big fan of R-77, looks too Western.

My favourite missile R-27, looks so Russian!

There's nothing cannot be done by communist rockets, if there is, make it double!

Thanks for watching and sorry for the abesence guys. Met some accident during my summer vocation in Koh Samui when I slippered in swimming pool and my foot thumb nail had to be removed by surgery. During my rest at home finally finished weapon painting. Besides the AA missiles provided by GWH I also added B-13L rocket launchers which are very common for PLAAF training. The outloads, look simple but took tons of efforts and patience. Different colours and surface texture means many masking works, both spray work and brush paint. And since outloads are usually stored very well they are generally brand new, which means you need to paint them as neat as you can since no weathering trick to cover your miss.

When I was getting mad drilling those rivets, I built some accessories to change the mood... I'm also scratch-building a PLA pilot. To be continued...

So after the busy May, June and 1st half of July (coutinous biz trips in Wuhan, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Dalian and Tokyo), I finally could make some update. Yes I'm still modeling the Flanker little by little. You can find the kit was designed with full rivets lay out, but some rivets are too shallow to hold washing, especially the stabilizers. So I used 0.15mm and 0.2mm drill to deepen them, one by one. Fortunately I do NOT need to add rivets by myself but only deepen them, so just some patience is all you need. Turn on the cooler and Hi-Fi in my work room, one hour before sleeping and it still took me about 10 nights to deepen all the rivets. After coating with Mr. Surface No.1500, I still used No.2000 sand paper to polish the surface, for a definite smooth effect bring to the camo painting. And this is how the final result looks like after surfacing. Rivets on stabilizers are very shallow, be sure to deepen them. Thanks to the good fitting of the kit, I will paint/weather parts before gluing them to avoid the annoying any obvious painting granule around the corners.

Now finally I can glue the upper and lower fuselage parts. Fitting is quite good so only very slight sanding work is necessary. Some panels and rivets are soft on the front half of upper fuselage so I rescribed/drilled them. It seems that PLAAF obmit the ECM antennas on LERX so I filled the original panel lines and rivets by putty. I'm quite pleasant with the fitting and thanks to brilliant part break down there was almost no stress to fit them together. So at last, I can paint...to be continued...

Also some addtional work. Add one wire on left main gear door (yes it's only on left gear door). Also piping the alcohol storage bottle. There is some slight shrinkage on fron gear door so I chose to flatten them by some putty.

Thank you all for the nice comments! Some new updates but still very slow (busy daily work and family service!). So I finished painting intakes and trunks. Nothing special, just pay attention to the small holes decal position. And decal show looks like this: I found another place which may cause assembling issue.

Nose gear. By the way all wheels are not glued to landing gear. I will glue the wheels in last minute after landing gears are installed, to assure all weighted tires stand on the same flat surface. Now finally it's time to glue the upper and lower fuselage. To be continued... Thanks for watching. Yufei

Landing gears after detailing, painting and weathering.

Generally Flanker is not a tail sitter but I still added one 10g metal weight just to avoid any suprise in case.

Main gear bays. Some parts are not mounted because I want to make masking easier for painting the fuselage. Will install them once fuselage camo is finished.

Nose gear bay. Do NOT fill the center line since it is there in real life. Just add some rivets and it will looks fine.

Don't forget the lower fuselage gear bay colour! Landing gears and actuators.

Thank you all for your encouragements guys! And sorry for keeping silent for a while due to a super busy May (3 weeks on biz trips!). So finally I finished painting job for all landing gear relevant parts. Yes again, I took kit parts breakdown advantage to paint/weather the parts BEFORE gluing to make the final effect as neat as I can. And again these are the colour charts for details I made, all based on my research on real life photos. All by GSI Creos Mr Color lacquer paint.

I used Galaxy Model pre-cut masking sheet. I strongly recommend you which is a must have for the build! With the masking sheet's help I could even paint the light grey sealing material between the glass and black frames. This kit is designed to have your canopy to be swithed bewteen open and close at any time you want, to enjoy both beautiful profile of the Flanker and cockpit details. To be continued......

IFR tube details painted by hand brush.