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1/48th Suhkoi Su-7BKL Fitter A x 2 - completed!


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Thanks for the undercarriage tip. :thumbsup: I like what you are doing with the kit.

As I have 2 kits of my own I will watch closely and learn :popcorn:

Cheers,

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There's a lot of good modelling going on in those undercarriage bays and legs, as well as a good measure of engineering, Rich :thumbsup:

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thanks guys, although this build is quite involved and requiring quite a bit of work it's actually the type of modelling I enjoy the most........yes I am a very sad troubled individual! :mental::wall: Actually these OZE/Eduard/Kopro/whatever models are quite fun to build..sort of.

Anyway what have I been up to, well not much if photos are to go by, pretty much most of the time was spent on the main gear.

The three other sets cut out, drilled and built up. They all have pins in their joints, I was going to replace them with plastic but for strength sake I’ve decided to leave the metal pins in. Small disks were punched out and used to cover the holes.

At this stage they could still pivot slightly, I needed to do this so as I could position them correctly before being glued in their final position.

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This wee bit of white plastic that be seen is REALLY important as without it the leg just flops about and you’ll have no chance of getting anything to sit right (another thing I found when I built the Su-17).

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While I was messing around with the main gear I decided to work on the gear doors as well. At this stage I wish I was working on the BMK version with the flat gear doors as it would have made adding PE detail bits so much easier! The BKL doors are bulged and the PE door detail is of cause a flat piece that has to be folded as well, panel-beating time!! :banghead:

First up the doors have to be thinned as they are rather thick!

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Then the two separate sections of the door are removed, they’re completely replace with PE bits. It’s quite hard to see but the inside surface around the edge is not flat, it’s actually quite contoured so fitting the PE bit is fun!

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Ok after a lot of trial and error I did it this way. The folded bit has to be removed as it’s too hard to do all this in one piece.

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Then just holding the first section on place you start to shape it, it only has to be the roughly shaped for the moment. Then just apply some super glue to the centre and push and work the PE in place until the glue dries. Then just do the same thing to just one edge at a time working your way around. I used a block of balsa and a wooden handle of a brush to do all this, it worked a treat. Then attach the other part (top piece) of the PE and repeat.

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It needs a wee bit of tiding up but doesn’t look too bad, unfortunately I squished the domed bit in the centre on this one….opps!

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So pretty much after a full day of work this is what I have.

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And how does it look?

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After all the work on the U/C door you won’t get to see much at all, but at least it looks almost right, which makes me happy. The only thing I will change is that small strut in the front, it’s shape and position is not right, it should have a pivot at the linkage and be a bit thinner. Now everything is in place and solid it should be a simple fix. Oh and now I have to detail the whole lot!!

The wheel wells in the fuselage are just about finished, I just need to smooth things and finish tiding it all up.

Still waiting for the final resin bits so I can close up the first fuselage.

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Ok this is sort of a smallish update on what should have been the addition of one tiny bit of PE and would have been covered in a normal update.!!

The nose gear has a small piece of PE fitted to create the link between the main nose gear strut and wheel yoke. It is meant to add a bit of detail and make the blob that is the nose gear look a bit better.

Well of cause it didn’t quite fit so after looking at photos I realized that the nose gear was really crap and needed a little bit of work, ok a lot!

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Unfortunately I had glued it together so it wasn’t an easy task to give it some definition, but after a lot of fine carving I eventually I ended up with this.

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It’s not to bad but nothing to write home about, at least it looks a bit better. The yellow circle (???) is the bit that caused all this and I didn't even us it in the end!

Now the really bad bit is I have to make up a second one……..it’s still in pieces and it is really bad so you know where this is going……..it'll be completely articulated as well!

I know it’s quite small and no one will notice, but….

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ok lets just start off by saying the resin bits still haven’t arrived and I got bored…….but first yesterdays work.

So with one nose gear done I couldn’t just leave the second one as is as it is quite horrible, so out with the saw and chop it up.

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Next up I made a new lower section of the gear with plastic and tidied up the rest of it and drill all the holes…….

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…then a few more bits of rod and a metal pin or two…..

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….and glue the whole lot together. Much better!

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Since these photos were taken I have made a couple of adjustments to it, the lower new section was a bit bent. But the main thing is it looks so much better than before. I have a little bit more to do but I’m leaving it all to dry solid before I continue on.

I made a few changes to the main gear and wheel well, mostly to do with the small strut on the main gear, I have removed it and added a mounting point for it in the wheel well. I still have to get around to detailing the main gear yet, but that can wait

I also built up the resin S-24B rockets, they do look awesome, as well as the drop tanks. These have new PE fins on them, but the joins for the two parts of the tanks was very poor, so a wee bit of stretched sprue should sort that out.

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So that’s what I did yesterday.

Now what do you do when you’re bored…..I know, start cutting things up and modifying!!

I hadn’t planned to do this at all but it was and is something that bugs me with all the models of the Su-7,17,20,22 and that is the wing fences! These are such a noticeable feature of this series of aircraft that it just seems wrong to leave them as thick chunks of plastic! Now I have only seen this done once before (I’m sure there are quite a few more examples out there), and I’m not sure if it was a mod kit they used or were custom made (I’m sure I’ve seen a PE mod kit for this), so I’m going replacing them!

I had to have a good long think about how I was going to do this and what I would use as the new fences as sanding them to make them thin was not really an option…I tried! So I eventually decided to use thin brass sheet, it’s really easy to work with and nice and strong. So off with the fences!

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Well I had actually made up a couple of test fences before I did this…….just to be sure I could…plus I was very careful how I removed them, in case I had to re-glue them back on! But no stopping now!

It looks like a weird looking tadpole but this shape was for a reason, namely to help me get it located correctly and give it and the wing some strength. Once the old fence was cut off the leftovers were filed and sanded back, before a slot was cut for the new piece.

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It looks so much better now, the thickness is a perfect match for the real thing, super happy with the result and how it looks!

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So start the production line….

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You will also notice I have filled in the old gun ports with hollow rod, they were completely the wrong shape. They will be drilled out slightly oversized for the new gun barrels.

So with that done now to the outer wing fences! These are a bit easier as I can cut the complete tip off to replace them.

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Looks better already…with BluTac holding it all together, I’d be lost without that stuff.

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Ok I added some thin plastic sheet to both sections of the plastic tip to make up far the material I had removed. It now just looks so much better!

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Both were should worthwhile mods and actually quite simple and easy to do for a change. I just have to finish off the other three tips, glue in the main fences and do a little bit of tiding up and the wings are complete.

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Hopefully tomorrow the resiny bits arrive as I really don’t want to drop the flaps…that would be hard work!!!

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Wow there is some seriously great modelling going on here, might just stop mine for awhile and pull up a chair and watch. (with a nice cold beer, well when I get home)

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Finally caught up with this, Rich and you are playing a blinder with these builds mate - superb modelling!

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thanks guys, as you can probably tell I'm having fun with these builds! These models just lend themselves to mod work and so i just can't help myself. If I wasn't build two at once I would have probably gone whole hog on just one. Dropping the flaps would just be the start, anyway.

I did do a little bit to them yesterday, the mod to the wing fences were finished a they were give a coat of Mr Surface 1200. They really look the part with some paint on!

Plus I started detailing the main gear, added some pipework to the undercarriage and some pipework the the wheel wells. Plus I'm adding a few more details to the wells as well. I can't duplicate the actuators for the gear as the way it's been moulded makes it impossible and still retain some strength. Though if I had been building one, I would have tried.

So now have to cool my heals for a week before I can get back to it. Oh and the resiny bit still haven't showed up!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Ok a smallish update today.

Finally my resin bits have arrived, these are the last bits of the puzzle, which is this build. Hopefully now I can concentrate on building now and not modifying!

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I forgot to show the wings last time after they had been cleaned up further and given a coat of Mr Surface 1200. The wing fences look really good with some paint on them. Now all that’s left to do is finish up the re-scribing work, remove some wing to fuselage panel lines that are wrong and finish detail the wheel wells.

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Speaking or wheels, I may have made a wee stuff-up with the nose gear! The one I completely re-built seemed to be a wee bit smaller than the other one, but I didn’t pay too much attention to this at the time. Well as I was going over the Eduard instructions for the same kit I noticed they mentioned 2 different types of nose gear…….of cause the Eduard model is just a re-mould of the old OZE one! A quick check and yes I had built up the wrong nose gear, I had re-built the shorter BMK version (non skid version) and not the BKL one! So I have to redo that at some stage!

These louvers look so much better than the kit ones, but like much of the rest of this build fitting is not quite so straightforward. These new ones along with the original louvers actually don’t fit at all, there is quite a noticeable gap that needs to be filled, which ever you use!

As you can see the additional white edge is made up of plastic strip and a wee bit of filler to fill the rather large gap! The new louvers look much better than stock, I have more tiding up to do on this one as I rushed it for the photo (had forgotten to take one).

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Whilst I was here I also fixed up the area behind the wing. The flap area profile is shown on the fuselage, this is incorrect, it should be a totally smooth surface, so that was corrected as well. You can see the plastic strip added to the louvers better here as well.

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I would have done a bit more yesterday, but I got distracted, the postman brought a new toy for me!

And I thought the Su-7 (or Su-27) was a big aircraft in 1/48th! That’s a 1/48th RESIN MiG-31BM Foxhound, I really have to try and resist the urge to play with it!!

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I have started painting the intake spikes so with luck I’ll have the one with the resin cockpit closed up today.

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Well she was a busy day today, got lots done and am super happy with how it’s all going.

First up as mentioned earlier I needed to fix the stuff up with one of the nose gears. This time using the correct bits I disassembled and rebuilt it, I’m getting much better at doing this and this one looks almost perfect.

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As can be seen, the shape is much better and not so flimsy looking as the previous attempt, unfortunately I can’t re-work the other one.

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That’s done so on to the real stuff, at this stage I will now break this double build into separate builds and concentrate on only one at a time, so the super detailed one first.

The nose cone and intake were painted so time to close everything up. To help align everything up I added small tabs along both sides of each fuselage piece. I have seen this recommended in other builds of this model so thought it may be a good idea!

After sitting over night (I glued it all together last late yesterday) I cleaned up the joins and had to add a wee bit of filler, plus I added some thin plastic sheet to fill the gap between the resin cockpit and fuselage cut out.

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The cockpit looks pretty good in place, the gaps around it have been tidied up so that bit is complete. That’s black textar that can be seen on the front side of the cockpit and not gaps.

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Next up was the tail unit, unfortunately this join is only a simple “butt” joint with no additional support and the two mating surfaces have completely different profiles! So this needs to be pinned, originally I was going to run long pins right up through the bottom of the fuselage but remembered I still have and engine to fit, so I used short ones instead. As the join is uneven I first temporary glued the fin in place with liquid glue, just so as to hold it in place while I aligned it. Once I was happy with the alignment I used super glue to hold it all in place.

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As can be seen there was a huge gap on one side so more plastic strip was used to fill the gap.

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Now to fit the wings, actually this was quite a simple task, they went on with minimum trouble as I had spent quite a bit of time earlier working on the joins and alignment. Again these were first glued in place with liquid glue before a wee bit of super glue was added to some of the gaps.

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The gaps weren’t too bad and only required a little re-shaping and filler, I didn’t use my usual stretched sprue to fill them as I still needed to remove some unwanted/incorrect panel lines, so filler was used.

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Well now she really looks like Su-7, she sits perfectly which is great and means I got the U/C right. From the top you can certainly see how heavily swept the wings were, 55°, she was really built for speed!

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I noticed that the fit for the tail surfaces is really horrible so I’ll have to do some work there, but after some more research. As I said earlier I’m super happy at where she’s at, all the major work is done, so it should be a smooth run to the end for this build.

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Looks very well indeed.

But just how the hell do you manage to paint things once its all assembled like that? The pics are of dry fitting, surely?

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