Construction

a) Cockpit interior is extremely simple; I expected more from a model of this scale [and price]. Fortunately for us, Eduard makes up for the kit's simplicity with the PE set. But first, don't forget to modify the floor's shape, including the front landing gear bay - the PE parts lower the floor, so it's impossible to fit the fuselage together without the prior adjustment. The manual isn't very precise about the cockpit's coloring details; try to obtain additional publications or search online. I used ethanol based Agama paints.

b) Fuselage is divided horizontally, comprises two parts, the wings, plus a separate components for the engine intake channels. Before assembling the fuselage you need to fit in the interior and fill the ejector pin marks inside the bays, which needs sanding and PE parts upgrade. You can improve the intakes with the metal parts both from the kit and from the detail set; Eduard's bottom louver look more realistic than the kit's version, but they also require more skill and patience. When I tried to fit the intakes with the fuselage, a minor problem occurred - the pastic components were wraped. The intake channel opening didn't match the fuselage, so I had to do a lot of filling, sanding and panel lines rescribing; that was particularly difficult between the engines. After fitting the intakes, you have to cut off a portion of plastic in the landing gear bay and clean it up.

c) Control surfaces are casted individually, with the exception of ailerons. I first bonded the slats, and placed them on a level board with some weight on the top. The slats are long and narrow, ideal for getting warped because of glue reaction. I cut openings above the base of vertical stabilizers, which were originally packed and poorly modeled. It didn't look good.

d) Armament is abundant; if you want to build a fully equipped model, you need to open the pre-pressed pylon openings on the wings and engines, before gluing the fuselage together.

e) Landing gears are more complex, especially the main gears' joint with the fuselage requires accuracy in gluing. The assembly of front landing gear leg is also difficult; together with the PE parts, it turns into a small puzzle. The wheels are separate disks, which I decorated with rubber tires. There was a problem with visible ejection marks, which I erased by sanding; that also gave the tires their used look.

f) Camouflage consists of three hues of grey and one blue-grey color. At first, I was going to use the authentic acrylic paints from the Bilek company, but after making a trial test, I discarded the idea. These paints create a thick layer and a very rough surface, which would look bad on such a big model. Finally, I chose similar color tones from ModelMaster. Due to a lack of space between the vertical stabilizers, I sprayed the model without them and glued them on later; the same with the vertical stabilizers, because of the shark silhouette decal. I used ethanol based Agama paints for the engine metals and for the radio covers [white radar cover in the front and green covers for the vertical stabilizers]; the exhaust components received various tones of Agama metalloid compounds.

g) Decals are quite hard even after the application of softening solutions, Agama in this case. The "brute" force of Hypersol helped in the end, but the decals still remained a bit hard like sheet metal, and even cracked in some cases [the shark silhouette on the wing line].


With a little patience and skill, you can use this kit and accessories to build yourself a very decent model of a highly interesting fighter Su-27.