Ukrainian Mania - The digital ‘Flanker’ - time to call it done, I think.

[Stokey Pete]

I’ve been a little in the doldrums modelling wise for the last few weeks. My Harrier has stalled and made its way to the Shelf of Doom for a little while, I just can’t seem to get the mojo to get into it properly. 
 This year and it’s madness has seen me forced  to sell all my camera equipment to keep up with bills, as I had no wedding bookings for the entire year, leaving me with virtually zero income, and an uncertain future right now. 
Add into all this that I had a rude awakening with my health recently which means I’ve gotta commit a whole heap of time to exercising to improve that situation, and take some away from the modelling bench. 
I previously had one of these monsters built and on display at my old photo studio, but it got trashed by an misplaced lump of timber that my father was moving about. I was gonna attempt a salvage but then I saw one up for sale with loads of extras, so thought I’d do a build from the ground up again. 
So, I’ve pulled down the huge Trumpeter box that I recently acquired from another LSP’er. This is truly, a Flanker with almost everything being thrown at it. Along with the kit, there is the following that I’ve chose to use....

Zactomodels, Nose, intakes, canopy, pylons, and full missile setup.

Aires, cockpit, wheel bays, exhausts, and a choice of ejector seat with our without a pilot. 
Master and Profimodeller, metal static dischargers, dynamic pressure sensors, and pitot tube. 
2 choice of wheels, Contact resine, or Armoury.
Begemot stencil decal set.

Foxbot Ukraine AF digital camouflage masking set, and decals for said aircraft. 

 

I couldn’t quite find the room to put the kitchen sink into it as well, even though I may as well be throwing everything else at it. I have stayed away from adding any Eduard PE to it, I just can’t seem to get on with it to produce a satisfactory result.

 

With all this, I’m attempting to build a showstopper,  if I get it built how I have it in my mind currently. It’ll be a long and slow burner, the missiles individually are mini models! I’ve predicted my future, it’ll be saw, cut, trim, sand, dry fit, sand, dry fit, repeat until happy. Until then, I’ve got a lot of unboxing, cataloging, and sorting to get through. 

 

Edited June 28, 2021 by Stokey Pete

[seiran01]

Ohhhhhh gonna follow this one! I’ll be doing the same build with a lot (but not all) of the aftermarket

[MikeMaben]

On 9/6/2020 at 8:54 AM, Stokey Pete said:

       I’ve gotta commit a whole heap of time to exercising to improve that situation, and take some away from the modelling bench.

 

I'm there too Pete   Hope you get some cashflow soon. 

[Stokey Pete]

Has anyone else built this with the Zacto’ canopy set?

Its making me nervous to the point where I’m sanding it down mm by mm so I don’t take too much material away. Tedious but necessary just to be sure.

Before

After

 

 

2 hours of very careful sanding and repeated test fits have produced a near seamless fit. I’ll figure out how to add some exterior detail to it later down the line. For now it’s going back in its box away from things that can scratch the surface, I can’t imagine there’s many of these left on the planet, so I have no wish to need to replace it because I did something dumb.

*breathes sigh of relief*

Edited September 13, 2020 by Stokey Pete

[Stokey Pete]

A mammoth sanding and test fitting session has been completed (almost), to the point where I think I can begin to lay some paint down. 
I added some tiny slivers of waste resin cutoffs to the side panels and the rear cockpit deck to allow for a more seamless fit, and leaving me with less filler to fill in the gaps. The instrument panel has been sanded to among paper thin, allowing the instrument faces to disappear, needing no masking before paint. 
I intend to build the office slightly different to normal, fixing the sidewalls directly to the fuselage sides rather than the tub. Mainly so i can do any filling and touching up of paintwork without spraying paint into the cockpit tub. 
I’m also going canopy closed, hence me sticking the driver in as well. 
 

 

 

 

 

[jimbo59]

Great start! I’ll be watching this with great interest 

[blackbetty]

if only i had one of these canopys, i´d pull a replacement in a hearbeat

[Stevepd]

Well I’ve missed this one. What an aeroplane and model. I had one of these years ago but passed it on as I thought I wouldn’t build it. Russian stuff is just cool and I’m sure you’ll make it a splendid example. Watching with interest.

[Stokey Pete]

I’m still working on it slowly. 
After managing to write my car off in an accident a few weeks ago, I’ve had to concentrate on 1/1 stuff for the time being. 

[Stokey Pete]

It’s only a small amount of progress, I’ve done no weathering yet. It’s not my sharpest work but close enough for what I want to achieve with the canopy closed. It’s going to be busy as hell in there with the pilot figure/seat too. Cockpit colour comes from MRP-049 Light Grey Blue. I’ve changed a few panels for different shades of blue/grey as would probably happen in old and battered offices used by the Ukrainian AF. It breaks up the monocolour look too. Artistic licence prevailed in this choice. I’m looking more for interesting over hyper accuracy.

 

 

 

 

[Crew Dog]

Excellent work so far, wish I knew of half the AM stuff you got when I did mine. Pulling up a bench for sure!

[Helmsman]

On 9/6/2020 at 10:54 AM, Stokey Pete said:

Aires, cockpit, wheel bays, exhausts, and a choice of ejector seat with our without a pilot. 

I suggest to replace exhausts with ResKit if you can. They're more accurate and fit better.

 

[Stokey Pete]

Woohoo, I had a delivery a few days ago, and the new (ridiculous) lockdown shenanigans have allowed me to take a peek at the task ahead. 
Zactomans missiles and pylons are exquisitely detailed and cast. There are a whole heap of parts though, it’s taken me a good afternoon of very careful trimming and sanding just to get to this point. Now all I gotta do is paint and build ‘em. 
 

These will keep me busy for the next couple of weeks. 

 

[Crew Dog]

Those look like they'll be fun, and I'm sure there gonna build up nice

[Stokey Pete]

Progress is painfully slow at the moment.
Trying to juggle the care of a 2.5yr old whirlwind, keeping my home working wife in a supply of tea and coffee, my own part time job, and trying to make sure I do my daily exercise for ‘Project get aerobatic flight fit’, is robbing me of bench time at the moment.

A rare occurrence happened however. I managed to complete something. I’ve finished the not so small task of the ‘Alamo’ missiles. Zactomans offerings are absolutely exquisite in their detail and quality. I’ve coupled that with the decals from Begemot (beware, there’s a whole lot of ‘em), that took forever to apply. 
There’s things I could improve on if I weren’t mounting them, like a few minor mould lines  running down the top/rear of the missile bodies. They’ll be hidden by the pylons so why make more work for myself huh? The nose cones are probably the wrong colour too but there’s so many variations among the photo’s I looked at that I just decided that “it looks nice like that, I think I’ll keep that colour”.

 The decals haven’t sat down as well as I’d have liked, despite several doses of micro sol. 
I tried a bit of pre-shading and different colour base layers to create a bit of interest in the predominantly white finish. 
....and here they are.

 

 

Next....the ‘Archer’ missiles. Yay, even more tiny fins and PE parts.