History

The Sukhoi Su-27 (Russian: Сухой Су-27; NATO reporting name: Flanker) is a twin-engine supermaneuverable fighter aircraft designed by Sukhoi.
It was intended as a direct competitor for the large United States fourth-generation fighters such as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat and F-15 Eagle, with 3,530-kilometre (1,910 nmi) range, heavy aircraft ordnance, sophisticated avionics and high manoeuvrability.
The Su-27 was designed for air superiority missions, and subsequent variants are able to perform almost all aerial warfare operations. It was designed with the Mikoyan MiG-29 as its complement.
The Su-27SM2 is a 4 generation block upgrade for the Russian Su-27, featuring some technology of the Su-35BM; it includes Irbis-E radar, and upgraded engines and avionics.
The Su-27SM3 is he same as the Su-27SM but is built new rather than a mid-life upgrade.
Info from Wikipedia

In the box

Packed in a rather large box with a painted picture of the Flanker in flight on the cover. The box contains 7 grey sprues and 1 clear sprue.
This kit is originally a 2014 Zvezda new tool boxing, and has been reboxed by Academy, Revell and Platz.
A review of the Platz Su-27SM kit can be found here. This boxing shares pretty much all the same sprues.

The build

Cockpit
There's not much in the way of parts for the cockpit, with the instrument panels having decals for the dials and switches, along with a plastic throttle lever, a six piece bang seat with moulded on harness, and a control column.
A pilot figure is supplied if you wish to include one.
Detail is average and you could add quite a bit of detail inside if you wished as the Flanker does have a large enough canopy to be able to see inside.

Closing up the fuselage
The fuselage is made up of three parts, with the lower half having the lower wing sections moulded in one piece. The front upper nose section, and a rear upper half complete the assembly.
The nose wheel well fits into the lower fuselage half and the cockpit is fitted into the upper fuselage half.
The external weapon points need drilling out from the wings, and once done the top halves of the wings are installed.
The fit is pretty good, but the wing uppers do need a little sanding and filling to get them flush.

Upper fuselage parts
Nose, rudder and tail planes are fitted in this stage.
The nose does not need any weight stuffed inside as this aircraft sits well on its wheels, even with a full weapon load.
The forward wing flaps slot into the wing leading edge, and launch rails for the wingtip missiles are fitted.
The twin tails and tail planes fit into predrilled slots. These are no movable, with the control surfaces moulded in the neutral position.
The large airbrake that sits on the fuselage is shown closed in the instructions, but later in the instructions it does show the airbrake in the open position, and what part number the actuator is. The instructions could possibly say it can be deployed open on the closed position page, but as I can't read Japanese I am unable to translate the text.

Lower fuselage
The lower fuselage has the four piece air intake trunks and a compressor fan at the rear to go onto the fuselage.
The intake trunk is made up of four parts including the fan, and is a little fiddly to put together, as the top part of the trunk sits inside a recess of the two side parts.
The intake trunks fit quite well onto the fuselage but a little sanding and filling is needed to get them flush at the rear.
Two centerline pylons and the lower fins fit into predrilled holes and slots.
If you are modelling the aircraft in flight, the gear doors can be fitted at this point.

Exhaust nozzles and Undercarriage
The exhaust nozzles are made up of 6 parts each, and are easy to go together, the only troublesome bit is that the afterburner nozzle has a cross shaped moulding sprue attached right in the middle of the tube, which is a bit of a bugger to remove and clean up.
Detail is nice for this scale, with the afterburner rings well detailed and with a bit of paint would like pretty good.
The afterburner cans slot into the fuselage with no effort and sit nice and flush.
The main undercarriage legs are made up of 6 parts each with each wheel made up of two halves. The main gear is easy to put together and slots into the bays very easy and securely.
The most difficult part is the gear doors, which have two door hinges which are quite small and hold the door in position. Strong glue is required as the contact surface is very small. The smaller gear door is pretty much the same, but instead of hinges you have an actuator to hold the door in place.
The nose gear is a made up of 8 parts and is quite fiddly. Once its all assembled it is fairly strong. Considering there is only three small contact points for inserting into the nose bay, the legs sits snugly and is strong enough to hold the weight of the aircraft.

Dangly and other bits
There are 4 or 5 ariels that need attaching to the fuselage depending on which marking option you are doing. All of these are small so best left off until the kit is pretty much finished.
The canopy can be modelled open or closed.
If you are modelling the aircraft on the ground, then Platz have supplied a four piece boarding ladder, wheel chocks, air intake covers and a standing pilot figure.

External stores
Included in the kit and spaced over two sprues are 4 x R-73, 2 x R-77, 8 x two types of R-27 (different seeker heads) and 2 x Kh-31 missiles.
All of these are air to air missiles, with the smaller R-73's moulded in one piece each, the R-77 need the rear fin added, the R-27's need two fins each added and the Kh-31 missiles are the most complex as they have 5 parts each. Each missile needs the body halves cementing, two booster rockets, and the rear rocket cone attaching.

Conclusion

This is a very nice kit, with a fair bit of detail added. A lot more can be added by the modeller if you so desire.
A nice touch is the added bonus's of the boarding ladder, standing pilot, wheel chocks and FOD covers.
Most of the seams need a little work with sanding and filler, but nothing too dramatic.
Two decal schemes are included with this kit, one in a two tone blue camo and the second in a two tone blue and grey camo.

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