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Parallel build: Su-27S Flanker 1:48 Blue 56 & 57 UkrAF - Update 2015-02-14


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Hi everybody,

Me and Juan (JFVicente) decided to try a parallel build this time. A few months ago, Juan asked me to sell him decals and masks for "Blue 57" from Begemot decal sheet. I said to him he will get them for free (whole Flanker Family 2 sheet) if we do two Flankers together. Then he promised a pair of aftermarket Alamo missiles, and in return I will send him my Archers, as Eduard gives too much for single plane in one box. So, I took another Ukrainian Flanker, from Eduard re-edition of Academy, and here we are.

Each of us will complete different Ukrainian single seater.

I will go for "Blue 56" and it will be built in Karlovac, Croatia.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Ukraine---Air/Sukhoi-Su-27S/0607109/L/

While Juan will make "Blue 57" in Madrid, Spain.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Ukraine---Air/Sukhoi-Su-27S/2250983/L/

We decided to start it now - this project was postponed due to our commitment on 1:72 scale projects: Juan with his superior Hasegawa Su-33 and me with my Italeri Su-34. So, we both have some "Flanker experience" in the past.

We would also like you support us all the way, as it's first parallel build for both of us. Also, Juan usually makes 1:72 scale planes only, while I have already one unfinished Flanker in 1:48, started many, many years ago. So we expect a lot of motivation and hugs from you. No kissy, kissy this time. :bleh:

To preserve our "momentum" in this joint project we decided to open one topic for both planes. You will have everything on single place, regardless of update frequency. It could be that one of us goes faster or slower, or we will have different approach, but the goal is the same.

In the next posts each of us will present his model with all the goodies we have collected.

Juan, I wish you the best modeling time during next few months. :cheers:

Stay tuned, Tomislav

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Ok, first the box. Eduard's re-edition of Academy Flanker with some PE, masks and resin inside. Not to forget decals printed by Cartograf.

Despite the "1/48" box info, I'm still strong supporter that it's 1/51 or 1/52 in length and that many details are also smaller than they should be (engine nozzles, cockpit, wheels...).

Yet, for this project I will use my common sense and will leave it as it is. No cutting this time ... :closedeyes:

P1030739.jpg

... except for numerous resin I will install.

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No cutting ... :evil_laugh:

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Nose pitot tubes from Dreammodel and Master Model and Quickboost nose

P1030740.jpg

20120613_174946.jpg

You get resin replacement cockpit with Eduard's box.

20120613_175536.jpg

Prepainted PE for cockpit and Eduard's old PE sheet for inner and outer details.

20120613_190645.jpg

Flory Hobby corrected vacuform canopy - I still didn't decide if I should use it or not.

P1030055.jpg

Quickboost external antennas and probes.

P1030137.jpg

Static dischargers from Master. I used those for MiG's in 1/48 scale and I must say they are very, very soft. :thumbsdown:

P1030114.jpg

Wheelbays... I noticed that I ordered wrong type from Wolfpack (left) so I took complete set from Aires (right)

P1040084.jpg

Extra Brassin set for wheels and wheel chocks. And ... most important ... torsion forks and front mudguard.

20120613_175014.jpg

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Resin flaperons...

20120613_174931.jpg

Northstar nozzles.

P1030111.jpg

Box decals with stencils...

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Begemot stencils... Probably just for weapons.

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I will got for this splinter beauty.

078ff892-e60e-4641-a0c2-601d4450d557.jpg

Although I could take any Ukrainian Flanker. :mg:

P1030053.jpg

Masks which come inside Eduard box.

20120613_175800.jpg

And finaly, Eduard's extra set for Archers. This will be my first task, so I can send 2nd pair to Juan.

Notice that I need to separate tiny little PE so it's much more convenient to start building Archers and then to send the rest.

P1030742.jpg

Stay tuned! :popcorn:

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Hi there!I am Juan, from Spain, and I have been around here for some time now, though this will be my first WIP in this forums. Also this is my first 1/48 kit ever. I have been always a 72nd modeller, but I will give this scale a try. Hope that the size will be not a problem to me...

As Tomislav said I will be building Blue 57 from Ukanian AF, but not exactly like on the photo he has linked, but it will be on another timeframe, most exactly around the time of RIAT ´96 as I really like this paint scheme with the edging on the white portion of the vertical stabs. more or less like this:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Ukraine---Air/Sukhoi-Su-27S/2579903/L/&sid=c45e89b8d1c22fb81b0035597077451b

So, here is my contribution on this thread, the Academy Su-27 with lots of goodies. Lets see what we have:

- First of all, the kit itself. The original Academy boxing in my case:

tn_SAM_7639_zpsb5f3b42a.jpg

- Secondly, some resins, all of them from Aires. From left to right: wheel bays, exhaust nozzles and cockpit.

tn_SAM_7641_zpse089a0aa.jpg

- Third, more resins, in this case from the Quickboost range. From left to right, flaperons, antennas and nose.

tn_SAM_7642_zps8c55f18c.jpg

- Fourth, some PE from Eduard, at left the exterior detail set and at right the Air to Air missiles set:

tn_SAM_7643_zps34a3d32d.jpg

- Fifth, decals from Begemot, at left the Flanker family #1 sheet (kindly provided by my friend Splinter) and the Flanker family stencil set at right.

tn_SAM_7644_zpse48ed261.jpg

- Sixth, a couple of metal tiny details: at left the static dischargers from Master Model (really tiny) and the pitot tube from Dream Model at right:

tn_SAM_7645_zps851c8948.jpg

- And lastly a couple of gems of sets. The Eduard Brassin R-27R and R-27T missile sets. I will be using only half of those sets (2 of each) as I will be sharing the other half my colleague, so i will start building this before the rest of the kit.

tn_SAM_7646_zpsdd6b866c.jpg

So here is it! As Tomislav said we hope your support and will appreciate your comments and suggestions.

Thanks in advance.

Juan

P.S. The start of the project by my part is not inminent,as I still need to finish the project on wich I am working at present, but for February 1st I will be cutting those resins. I have promissed myself!
Edited by JFVicente
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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi! Here is Juan, from Spain. Many thanks friends for your interest! I have just started with the work on this project, but have spent most of the time with the "dirty job", i.e. cutting and cleaning resins and plastic on the kit to make room for the cockpit and so... So nothing relevant or interesting as to be shown by now.

And about Splinter, I have received a PM from him today saying that he has spent the last days in the bed with a serious flu, sio he has been not able to start with his work.
Anyhow, stay tunned so I will try to show some pics by the begining of the next week.

Rgds.

Juan

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Ken (Flankerman) wrote an article about this kit for Lindenhill and I seem to recall he says the measurements are about spot on par the length nose to tail?

Lovely resin collections though, I've got one of these I want to throw everything at. Look forward to seeing these build.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hi everybody,

I recovered from the flu and closed my Su-34 project last Sunday. :cold:

In the meantime, I started with cutting resin.

P1040580.jpg

Then I deepen the hole for nose pitot tube for about 1 cm. Reason for this was to solder extra brass wire to pitot tube.

This way I gain alignment and better positioning of pitot tube inside resin nose. Also, later when fuselage will be closed, I can place a rod inside nose hole to be able to touch and maneuver with the model, without touching the nose (painting, drying, etc ...). And, when everything is finished, I replace rod with pitot tube and that's it!

I decided to go for Master Model pitot tube, as it's shape is slightly better than from Dream Model. Also Master model uses brass, which is easier to solder to brass rod, and the joint is hard.

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My Fahrenheit soldering station.

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But, also this brass tube pointed me to a conclusion that it's not good because it ca be easily bent.

So, I changed to Dream Model which is made from aluminium. Prep work for soldering.

P1040577_2.jpg

After soldering - the joint is not solid hard, as it's brass-aluminium, but gives me enough freedom to change direction as desired. Why? Because I did not drill hole totally thru the central axis of nose - it's a little bit ....off ... :whistle:

P1040579_2.jpg

P1040578_2.jpg

The nose itself got 1 mm thick styrene strip, as it's narrow than hole in Academy fuselage. One thing I forgot is to hollow the nose. As you can see it's full, and pretty heavy. I will do it in the upcoming days.

One of my friends made Academy Su-30 with this nose, and he suggest to hollow the nose, as it's pretty heavy load on front leg.

P1040581_2.jpg

I also had to add additional strips of aluminium tape, as it's very thin so you can control thickness with layers, and make a perfect fit with fuselage.

Sorry for unsharp image.

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P1040584_2.jpg

Later in the evening I'll add some more photos: front wheelbay vs. cockpit. :photo:

Stay tuned.

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First thing you should have in mind when installing front wheelbay and cockpit on Su-27, is that even in real Flanker the pilot is literally sitting on the front wheel.

http://i741.photobucket.com/albums/xx57/supergru/Blue_56/Rendgen_PP-1.jpg

So if the real thing has no space between front wheelbay and cockpit, how will it end 48 times smaller?

Next problem you have is rather thick resing block you need to get rid from Eduard's box update. Remember this.

20120613_175536_2.jpg

My Dremel did the work. I have good grinder head for it (meaning sharp) but it's hard to control the work with it.

So I got pretty nasty holes in the floor. :shutup:

P1040590.jpg

Later I used putty to act as a glue between styrene and resin floor.

P1040591_2.jpg

Holes are still visible, but they will be less noticeable, once I add a few more layers of putty. Besides, with K-36 seat in position, this will be covered almost completely.

P1040592_2.jpg

So this is Aires front wheelbay in place, glued with CA only. Maybe later I will add some epoxy putty to increase contact area between wheelbay and fuselage, similar as on Su-34.

Two things are to be noted: amount of resin which CAN be removed and amount of resin which NEEDS to be removed. I don't understand production process of such delicate resin products, but I think less resin would be very positive for both modeler and his/hers model. :banghead:

P1040594.jpg

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This is photo of first dry fit between cockpit (left bottom) and wheelbay (upper, right).

P1040586_2.jpg

As you can see, there is a good 7-8 mm between so there was a lot of work ahead, to get something like this. :bouncy:

Resin nose, front wheelbay and cockpit have a good fit now.

P1040587.jpg

Next thing is main wheelbay.

But, actually intakes are first to come. I would like to have intakes opened completely, with FOD mesh down (deactivated). For this I will try to inspire myself with work of Bonehammer73 (her preproduction Su-30MKK 503 a few years back).

Down the 2nd page, she explains how she used 0.25 mm styrene for intakes.

http://www.arcforums.com/forums/air/index.php?showtopic=177461&st=20

After that I will paint the intakes from inside and install them. Once, they are in place I can focus on main wheelbay.

As you know, main wheelbay on Su-27 family has two parts: front, where the wheel itself goes in, rotated for 90 degrees and rear part, where is strut only.

To replace main wheelbay, Aires says you need to cut lower wing halves from fuselage, completely.

P1040595_2.jpg

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My current idea is to do so (cut wings, install two separate resin parts) and then to glue lower wings to upper wings (and upper fuselage since they are molded together) and then to lower fuselage and to fill gaps.

First I would do is to dryfit front part and then dryfit rear part of resin wheelbay. Then I would glue rear part, with front part still detachable, so this way I can paint it and do proper weathering. Then I will glue front part.

Also, there is a possibility that same thing as on Su-34 will happen: front main wheelbay which goes thru the roof. Or better to say, thru upper fuselage. I already have thinned resin as much as I could. I will do the same to upper fuselage. Thing is, that in 1/72 scale there is much less "flesh" which can be thinned on both sides, when compared to 1/48 scale. So, I'm on positive side here!!! :clap:

Juan contacted me: he is way ahead already (where has this Spanish flu came from anyway ???? :bleh: ). He said he will update his part in a few days, explaining how to avoid this mess with main wheelbay. I'm looking forward to his ideas!!!

Even without Juan's update I have enough to do with intakes and cockpit. Long term goal is to close the fuselage (fuselage halves), this is why all this nasty work needs to be done first.

Stay tuned, Tomislav :popcorn:

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Hi all! Tomislav, I,m glad that you finnaly have recovered from that flu that seems like we are always exporting to the rest of Europe every winter.

Finally I will try to post my update. Yesterday, I spent more than an hour writing it and when it was almost done I accidentally pressed the back button and everything disappeared, so now I,m writing it on word and will copy and paste on the forum when it is done...

Well, me, like Tomislav started the project by cutting and cleaning lot of resin parts and components. Then I focused on preparing the cockpit(Aires in my case), so I attached all the photoetched belts to the seat:

tn_SAM_7733_zps5bd1da49.jpg

It was some tricky and patience testing, but once done the result is worth the effort.

Then I dry fitted the cockpit on place. Needles to say is that it needed a lot of thinning by its lower face to be able to introduce it into the fuselage together with the front wheel bay. Also, thinning of the walls of the kit was necesary to install those provided by Aires. Here is it in place.

tn_SAM_7729_zps03545b5d.jpg

The rear deck behind the cockpit is definitively installed:

tn_SAM_7710_zpse8653a16.jpg

At this point I installed the front bay on place permanently:

tn_SAM_7706_zpscda21f87.jpg

It fit exactly on the opening left when you remove the original Academy wheel bay, but it shows the battery compartment exposed and on the real thing it is hidden into the lower fuselage, as tomislav has shown, so I also covered this area. For this I used some strips of styrene.

Now the problem is that the door that covers this bay is larger by about 5 mm. altought this is notvery evident on this pic. So I will try to take care of this at a later stage:

tn_SAM_7708_zpsd4d8a8b6.jpg

With the front wheel bay in place and the cockpit dry fitted I checked the fitment of the two fuselage halves. I still need to sand a bit more the wheel bay. Aside of that my kit is slightly twisted so some wrestling will be necessary to close the fuselage when the time comes:

tn_SAM_7732_zpsc351abe9.jpg

Then I focused on installing the main wheel bays, and following the Aires instructions I removed the same area on the left wing that Tomislav shows on his update. This was a big mistake as I soon cracked the wing apart from the rest of the kit, as the joining resulting after the cut very thin. After gluing the resin well in place I was forced to temporally joining the upper and lower fuselages to be able to rebuild the damaged wing without altering the geometry or the dimensions of the lower wing. This was the final result:

tn_SAM_7702_zps6051a991.jpg

I needed to add a little strip of styrene to connect the resin part to the plastic wing as can be seen. This was probably due to an inappropriate cut by my side.

For the other wheel well I took another way and instead of cutting all at a time I drawn a template of the face of the well on the plastic:

tn_SAM_7711_zpsb58fb8cc.jpg

And cutted the affected area:

tn_SAM_7713_zpsf5f2d741.jpg

On the inner side one only ned to cut one of the walls of the original bay, leaving the others intact for better strength:

tn_SAM_7712_zps820bbbb9.jpg

Then after some trimming and dry fitting I was able to install the front part of the well permanently on place:

tn_SAM_7716_zpsaac9d96f.jpg

And then cutted the remaining of the bay and a little area of the lower wing as instructed by Aires:

tn_SAM_7714_zps10ad0ae9.jpg

This was carefully done in two steps taking care of not cutting plactic in excess.

tn_SAM_7717_zpse57a1814.jpg

As seen one need to cut a part of the fuselage adjacent to the engine nacelle. And finally after some test fitting I was able to install the rear portion of the wheel bay:

tn_SAM_7719_zpsd612eac8.jpg

Some filling is still needed, but much easier that in the first case. If somebody is going to use this replacement resins I would fully recommend to take the procces iin two steps. It could be a bit larger but mush more sure for the integrity of the kit.

That,s all by now. I have some more work done, so I will be probably psoting a new update tomorrow.

Regards.

Juan

Edited by JFVicente
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Hi again! And thanks James for your interest too.

Hera is a little new update. I have been working on the air intakes. If you want to show some part of the intake duct, firstly one have to clean the interior of the parts from ejection marks and those absurd alignment pins that Academy has produced on the very front end of the parts. So some sanding is necesary:


tn_SAM_7694_zps5ab851c3.jpg

My intention is to represent the variables doors raised, so only a minimum part of the duct will be visible. Said ramps are provided by Academy by PE elements. Thought they are very oversimplified:

tn_SAM_7692_zpsfad07582.jpg

I found this "mesh" around home. It,s a piece of some kind of synthetic fabric from an old toy.

tn_SAM_7689_zps8a24e63f.jpg

I cuted some pieces of this and glued them by the back of the PE parts:

tn_SAM_7693_zpsf1caecca.jpg

Now they look much busier to me.

Next I reworked the upper variable ramps, as they are slightly oversimplified as provided by Academy.


tn_SAM_7695_zpsd04e5c8e.jpg

So I glued some pieces of styrene sheet on them and then I scribbed few rows of rivets with the Trumpeter tool.

tn_SAM_7705_zpsf36cd12a.jpg

Hope those tiny hole will be noticeable once painted...

The exterior face of the intake trunks is part of the main wheel well, once the rear doors are closed. Here we can find this recessed area (marked with pen) that, seems to me, is where the legs hinges:


tn_SAM_7698_zpsb5309f58.jpg

I removed the said area with the inintention of give them more deepness and add further detail by scratch. So I added some strips of styrene by the inside and then blanked them again with styrene sheet:

tn_SAM_7699_zps9b258052.jpg

I also opened the panels marked on the following pic.

tn_SAM_7700_zps7c274e4f.jpg

On the real thing they are holes with some elements protruding from them, so I will be adding some detail by scratch too.

tn_SAM_7704_zpsae1a5bdf.jpg

And that,s all for now.

Coments and suggestions are very welcome.

Rgds.

Juan

Edited by JFVicente
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  • 2 weeks later...

Was browsing trough some plans the other day. Be careful! Panel lines on the top sides of the wings are wrong, so they need to be filled and rescribed.

Edited by gregax
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