1/32 Trumpeter SU-27 Flanker

by Terry Chan

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Hello, this is my first submission to ARC: the Trumpeter 1/32 Flanker.  I've always wanted to build this big model and finish it in a spectacular paint job.  I even bought the Black Box cockpit set before I bought the kit itself, but due to its sheer size (and the dire consequence of landing in my wife's doghouse), I never followed through with the grand master plan until I picked up the kit at the local hobby store for half of the MSRP (CDN$80!!!) in August.  When you see such a great kit on such a discount, you have to buy first and ask questions later.

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First thing to be constructed is the cockpit.  As with any Black Box products, the SU-27 resin cockpit set has an excellent level of detail.  As with any Black Box cockpit sets, you'd curse the maker's mother for 50 times before you manage to fit the thing inside the fuselage.  The following are the problems that I encountered with this BB set, just the usual minor fit issues, nothing that'd make you want to jump off the balcony:
  • The tub floor needs to be sanded paper-thin and part of the nose gear well bulkhead must be removed in order to fit
  • The front coaming is beautifully molded - if you were building a 1/20 scale SU-27.  It's molded too wide and no amount of trimming will get it to fit with either the kit windscreen or Zacto model replacement (more on that later).  Use the kit part and scratch build the details
  • The rear panel behind the K-36 bang seat was warped in my copy.  It'd fit nicely if you negotiate with it in a civil manner (using files and razor saws), but you might end up losing some details.

 

The rest of the kit went together without too much headaches.  It really is a straight-forward and easy to build kit, especially considering it's a 1/32 scale kit with a lot of complex lines.  A lot of online reviews of this kit complain about the fiddly nature of the photo-etch hinges for slats and flaps.  Personally I don't have any problems with them, in fact, I found them enjoyable to build and worked well in most cases.  What I didn't like was Trumpeter's decision to make the landing gears actuate.  I glued all of them tight.

In addition to the BB cockpit set, I also added Zactomodel's replacement canopy set.  I ordered this set when the model was primed and masked and ready for painting, thinking it'd be a "drop-in" replacement.  Well, it turned out installing this vacuform canopy involved cutting part of the nose to install the infra-red sensor.  Half a tube of gap-filling super glue later, I had the set installed and it was well worth the effort.  The shape of the canopy is sleek and beautiful, and the plastic's clarity is absolutely flawless.  Heck, I've never even seen glass that clear.

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Painting this model was easily the most time-consuming task.  I chose to do my Flanker in the green splinter camo of the Eritrean Air Force, beacuse as Paris Hilton would say, "that's hot".

First the entire airframe was sprayed with Mr. Surface 1200.  This was followed by a good rub-down with Tamiya 2000 grade sandpaper (which I affectionately refer to as "Mrs. Surface").  The panel lines were sprayed with black, then the engine area was painted with Alclad steel and jet exhaust.  The next step was spraying white over the entire airframe, leaving the black pre-shade showing through.

Now comes the fun part: masking.  This complex paint scheme requires a lot of reference photos to aid the exact implementation of all the lines and angles of the paint job.  I'm an advocate for building a model that is 100% accurate to the real thing - as long as I don't have to leave my computer.  A whopping total of 1 hour on Google later, I found only 3 photos of the Eritrean Flankers, none of them show the top side view.  Fortunately I happened to have Hi-Decal's 1/48 International Flanker sheet (which has the ERAF Flankers) so I used it as the reference in addition to my 1/32 Linden Hill sheet instructions.  I don't know how accurate the Hi-Decal instructions are but it's the only thing I could go with.

If you're interested in doing a splinter for this model, my recommendation to you is to buy a lot of Tamiya masking tape.  Think about the amount of tape required to wrap an army of mummies, multiply that by 3, would be an somewhat accurate estimate.  My other recommendation is to have another concurrent project just so you could break up the pace a bit: masking a splinter of this size is very tedious.

The paints I used were mostly acrylics: Gunze acrylics and Model Master Acryl.  All 3 colors (pale blue, medium green and dark green) were custom mixed by using reference photos (yes, all the 3 of them).  They were diluted to be translucent, then sprayed on the whitened airframe.  The translucent paint allow the white and pre-shading to show through, creating a weathered and lightened scale effect.

A coat of Future later, decals were applied.  The roundels, faux canopy and the number "609" were from Linden Hill, the stencils were from the kit sheet.  I'm not convinced that all the stencils on Russion Flankers were applied on ERAF Flankers, but I put them on anyways because there are no top view photos to show otherwise.  At least those red stencils add some visual interest and contrast to a blue-green airframe.

A wash was applied to the decaled model.  This was followed by a flat coat and pastel chalk was lightly brushed over panel lines for weathering.  The landing gears and missles were attached to the pylons.  I don't even know if ERAF has access to all those missiles, but by now the notion of 100% accurate is out of the window so I just decided to just make this thing look cool.  Hence I tagged on 8 missiles.

The finished model is impressive and I'm quite pleased with the paint job.  It's so big that it won't fit on my display shelf.  I have to put it on my work bench.  When I need to work on another model, I'd move it to the kitchen counter, where it'd receive the "death stare" from my wife.

Terry

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Photos and text © by Terry Chan