Ok, so this is my first build log over here on aeroscale, I am usually to be found over on Armorama for obvious reasons. Wile I have been building for over 30 years I am not one for "finishing" any kits. Tis is going to be my first plane kit, no joke. Started a few years ago but never got very far. . . .which brings us to now.

So I have never been a fan of Russian aircraft, to be honest I had always planned that I would be shooting them down in my lifetime, but things change. I happen to see this somewhere on line and fell in love with the look. Went searching for a kit and viola! Turns out that Tamiya makes one. Well, not really. Turns out that Tamiya has reboxed the Italeri kit, which is a rebox of the revell of Germany kit, which is a rebox, well you get the idea. So while the kit is "good" it is not a typical Tamiya kit.

I will be building this mostly out of the box with little to no modification or scratch building. Just want to get it under my belt and get comfortable with the process. I started this kit for the Super Sukhois campaign, good reason to get off my butt and build it, and then decided that since no one else has done one, that I would as I thinkitis both a worthwhile subject and something needed here on the site (even if it is from a total noob).

So the project began with the cockpit and while iwas making some decent head way life got in the way. So while the cockpit has taken more time than I would like, it has been good to get the ideas of how to down. Goody for me. So rather than blather on about things I will get down to the nuts and bolts so to speak.

The cockpit provided in the kit is woefully inaccurate but not totally useless. I have chosen to build this one OOB so be it, I will suffer through and make the best of it. S,e of the issues to note, there is no rear door in the cockpit rear wall for the crew to enter and egress through (not to mention going to the loo), so this can be added with some careful scratch building if you desire. I do not. The control panels and controls are completely wrong and not even close to the real deal. I have seen someone on line construct their own brand new controller panel that looked quite good,so it can be done. Also the seats are semi shaped correctly but not really and they cry out for some basic detail like seat belts, which I did add.

I a, currently in the process of weathering the cockpit and just tonight managed to finish up the basic paint and get a coat of future on it. Bully! I also added the air intakes to the lower fuselage and here is where I noticed how really this was not a true Tamiya kit. The seams along the lines where the fuselage and the intake meet needs some serious filling and sanding. Smwhile the cockpit get the oils the fuselage will be getting some bondo.

Here are some pics that will show my progress. Please feel free to ask questions and make some suggestions. I will try to document my progress as carefully as possible so that we can have a good record of how this kit builds up out of the box. Cheers

































Cheers.

looking good so far im watching

Cockpit finished! Weatherd and in place. ALso got the air intakes mounted and unfortunately there were some gaps that needed to be filled. Used the AV putty, which I am now having mixed feelings about. It does not get very hard and tends to rub off when sanded, just my observations. Opted instead to use some Mr. Surfacer 1000 to help fill the rest of the gaps. Worked well once you build up a few coats. I will be experimenting with a few gap fillers on this project just to see how things work.
Another note the AKAN Modern Russian paint set works really well throught he airbrush when thinned with ISO and brushes well the same way, so for those of you in need to good Russian colour, there you go (linden hill is the import co.)

SO here are some of the final photos of the "pit" in place. The lighting is low and they may not be the best, but what are you gonna do, right?

Cheers.

This is not a very common kit to see. Good work so far.

Had part of the day off so I managed to get some "work" done. Added the wings, tails and canards to the mix today. Everything fits well enough but there are some gaps which I ended up filling with Mr. Dissolved Putty, which I confess I am becoming very fond of. Goes on easily enough with a small brush and cleans up with ISO. When you put it on you can clean up most of the excess with your finger or a qtip or even the same brush you used to apply with a dip into ISO, super (and stupid) simple. It fills the cracks and gaps easily and quickly without any hassle. I am going back over some of the other gaps with this now too. The two halves of the fuselage go together with the same issues. Mostly good with some gaps and stuff to fill. These were bigger so I opted for Mr. Surfacer 500 to tackle that. This I let sit and cure then sanded and most of the issues are more better (yes I said more better) now, but I think still need some touch ups. Landing gear will be built up separately and then added into place after the main colours are on so that I can paint the gear, wheels and bays without issue. Same with the ordnance and pylons. I need to dip the canopy into some future tonight and see what else I can do before it gets too late. Here are the updates let me know. Cheers.

Nice cockpit and good progress so far.

Looking forward to see more

So, forgot to seal the cockpit "tub" with clear flat before installing it, silly me. So sprayed a light coat on last night let sit for a while then decided to wash the kit to remove all the grease and finger prints, etc. Well the clear flat gave the whole tub that milky white coating, and I hoped that washing it would remove most of it and so it did. But it also removed some paint too. Crud. So did some touch ups in the cockpit and will go back over it with some oil washes so that it gets that nice depth again, hopefully it will all work out. Otherwise I am gonna be kinda pissed as that was looking pretty sweet for a first try.

Sprayed the wheel wells tonight, masked them and then primed the whole deal. I have also built up the gear and two missiles (I am assuming that is what there are, they are big and missile shaped) so while it all is drying I have other things going too. Will try to update with pics tomorrow. Cheers.

Ok. Got the cockpit issue fixed with a quick and dirty (no pun intended) oil wash. Things seems to be more "normal" now than the milky, chalky look they had taken.

Masked off the cockpit and gear bays and primed the whole deal once again to make sure all of the seams are smooth and ready to paint.

I also primed the struts for the gear. The gear bay doors all need to be cleaned up, primed and ready to paint inside and out soon as well as the ordinance and tires. One thing that I have noticed doing this is that aircraft seem to build quicker than armor kits but the painting seems to be more involved. There are a lot of little bits on this kit that will need to be masked while the rest of the kit is camouflaged, which in and of itself, will be an issue I am sure.

My fear is that once I get a colour down and then need to mask it the first colour will be torn off. I am thinking of the engine nozzles in particular. I am sure that there is a trick to this but I am not in the know yet. Any suggestions? Please feel free to let me know. Cheers.

Been a while since I was able to post some progress photos as well as update so here is the readers digest version.
Managed to get the gear made and the gear bay doors cleaned up, primed and painted. The interior of the doors was done in grey and will need to be done in white, so add that to the to do list. The gear is together, tires painted but not the hubs. The gear needs to have the detail paint added then it will be ready for assembly to the rest of the kit. The wing pylons have all been added and the under side has an initial coat of blue. THe grey for the radome, leading edges and tail tops has been added. As has the dark olive aroun the cockpit exterior. I think that I am going to add the gear, doors and then mask the bottom off and get the top side painted. Once that is done, detail paint cleanup and start weathering. Then add the ordinance start the decals and all the rest. I really hate masking and all the masking that aircraft kits seem to require as compared to armor. Oh well. Cheers.

Looking good Damon! Keep up the good work. Russell

Nice work! Don't see many of these being built. Keep it coming!

Ok, so my apologies for being away for so long I have been finishing up another build for a campaign over on Armorama (I am really an armor guy0 and 1:1 projects as well as keeping my business up and running. Enough about the drudgery.

So I have been making some slow and steady progress, although my inexperience with aircraft has led to some issues and slow periods at times. While my foresight is not getting any better, my hind sight sure is!

Will post some pictures below to catch you all up on what has been happening in my absence and will provide some insight in to this build, as that really is the purpose of doing a build log, right?

So since my last post, I tried desperately to figure out a surefire way to get the camouflage masking done in a way that worked well. I bought blue tac. I bought Tamiya tape. I boughts parafilm M. Come to find out that none of these work particularly well and that really I need to just figure out how to free hand this and get good at that. What I did find is that the parafilm m never stretched right and would tear frequently. Because it is cold in my garage in winter I assume that this might have affected its performance as well as its adhesion. The blue tac did not work to well either. It kept shrinking back and would not stay down on the kit especially in curves. Having to do this all over I would not assemble the whole kit and then paint. I would leave the tails (vertical stabilizers) off paint them on a flat surface and then attach. Same with the tail cones. The gear has been a problem the last few days while trying to attach decals. So not to future self, re read this thread to avoid problems on the next build.

The home made decals that I have tried to make for the number 48 plane are not the best and I still have to find one for the right side as the camo colour there is the lightest shade and not the darkest. Fun.

I am hopeful that a good solid weathering job is going to save this build as I am not super happy with the results. I have found that deadlines are not my favorite thing to work with and usually causes me to cut corners. Again, hindsight.

My plan from, here is to leave off many of the decals as the aircraft that I am modeling does not seem to have most that are on the sheet and I know that my next one of these (yes I have another in the stash) will need some of these decals to complete the kit as it is in real life.

I have a bit of touch ups to do before any weathering begins. So I am hoping to get another coat of future on tonight and maybe tomorrow and then start with the oil washes to bring out the panel lines and such. After that dry brushing and some graphite work to bring out the detail. Let me know. Cheers

Next update. Got this sealed with several coats of future and started the oil washes. First wash, was strange, seemed "greasy" and kinda smeared what little paint there was around the plastic. Wiped this all down and tried the next day with a different thinner and new paint combo. Seemed to work well. The other issue that I had was the first wash dissolved some of the glue on some pieces like the landing gear doors. Not fun to try to reglue this while you are in the middle of an oil wash.

The other item that also came off was one of the decals, this I had never seen before. All of the decals were put on with micro set and sealed with micro sol, so I am not sure how this happened. Managed to get it back in, in place, set and sealed with future, without too much fuss.

I started with an oil wash with black, some white and smidge each of brown and blue, to give that dirty, petrol kind of look and I am sure that had I let it sit longer it would have acted as a filter, but I just wanted it in the recesses. This was followed by a greyish wash that was meant to "fuzz" the colour a bit and act as a filter of sorts. What I got was a layer of greyish dust. So most of this was wiped off with some clean spirits and another darker wash was applied to specific areas. I am considering going over it one more time with a full black super thin wash to try and really get in the fine details. we'll see.

Once the washes are done I am going to seal with flat or satin and then start the dry brushing and graphite. My hope is that the graphite will give it that "metallic" and sooty look that I think it will. Here are the pics for now.

Something I forgot to mention, after adding the oil washes I noticed a "halo" around the wing decals that is not coming off, despite some scrubbing with thinner and brush. What causes this and is there a way to remove it without destroying the finish?

It could be the wash reacting with leftover setting solution or decal glue. Perhaps you can lightly drybrush with the surrounding colour to disguise it a bit?

Jess;
That is a fantastic idea and I have to admit that I now feel kinda stupid. But yes, that might work well. Thank you.

Finished this about two weeks ago but have been down and out with a sinus infection and the flu so, yea-fun. I did not get to spend enough time with this kit (thanks God I have a second one) as I would have liked and I think that some details suffered as a result. Hind sight is 20/20 as they say. Here are the final picks let me know what you think good or bad as this is my first ever aircraft build. As I previously stated I consider myself an armor guy although my experience is limited in all areas. One thing I did note is that after getting the oil washes and drybrushing all done I have come to the realization that aircraft models are not as forgiving as armor. You really need to do all the preshading that I usually think is overkill, but here I see why. I am used to slapping on the paint pretty thick on armor kits (not that I have more than 3 under my belt now, but you know) where as on the ac I see the need for subtlety and control. Had I done on of this and laid the camo on lighter I might have achieved the result I wanted but it was not to be this time. Such is life. Cheers.