1/48 Ukraine Su-27 Flanker

by Tony Leger on Oct 27 2003

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The Flanker for me has some real attractiveness about it. Maybe it's the lines, it's size, it's nimbleness in flight, it's scariness with all those missiles or all of the above wrapped up in some awesome colors/schemes. 
This build is the Academy Su-27 kit built up to be an aircraft from the Ukraine Air Force 831st fighter regiment, Mirgorod AFB. Those of you searching for a book on the SU-27 should get Fomin's excellent book. My first inspiration for this was after seeing the Ukraine Su-27 Demo team's splinter scheme.   Looking in Fomin's book plus seeing shots of a UB in the same scheme got me hooked. The crest shown in the picture is an authentic UAF one. 

The kit with it's flaws as discussed in other postings remains the best in 1:48 scale. Thanks to some conversions out there we can build some of the other impressive variants of this amazing aircraft. I built up the kit after having read through articles such as those found at Ken Duffy's Flanker website. I chose to use the beautiful Cutting Edge cockpit for this build, MV lenses on the nosewheel gear, some plumbing in the gear wells, resin burners/cans, and installed a photo-etch HUD. Pretty much the standard mods for the kit. I also rebuilt thinner fins for the R-27 but that was very painful so I didn't bother on the R-73... I scooped a set from the MiG-29 kit since they were thinner, though still thick.

Click on images below to see larger images

The splinter camo scheme was derived using various photos I'd seen of other aircraft as well from the Flanker 2.5 flight simulator. The simulator has splinter Ukrainian SU27 you can rotate to see the scheme at many angles. 
That allowed me to fill in any gaps the photos I had didn't show. 
Paint wise the base color used is Xtracolor X601 Flanker Medium Blue which I left dry many days to ensure proper curing. For the camo masks I used very low tack (purple color) painters tape from Lowes. From there the splinter patterns were cut. I worked slowly spraying  small sections at a time leaving ample time for the paint to dry. The gray is X606 Hind Blue Grey from Xtracolor while the darker blue is X-14 Sky Blue from Tamiya. The green is Model Master Dark Green. Flanker engines have alot of discoloration which was one of my tougher stages. The finish was made up of multiple shades of Model Master metalizer then coated with thinned blues and black wash.

The decals were trimmed from the Cutting Edge Ukraine Demo Flanker sheet such as the badges, crests, roundels. The stenciled numbers are Archer dry transfers which were a joy to apply. All in all I'm very pleased with the outcome and just love the look. Now I'll see about doing an SU-30MKI canards and all.

Tony

Photos and text © by Tony Leger