Sukhoi Su-30MKI

by Steven St James

Academy's 1/48 scale Su-27 is available online from Squadron.com

This kit started as the Academy SU27UB. I ordered the SOL conversion stuff for the Su-30 and almost immediately decided I didn't like it. Luckily, there was an old back issue of Hobby Japan that a friend turned me onto and I was able to see someone else's conversion of this kit. I went with the article.

The lex and the canards were cut from .30 styrene sheet and sanded to shape. The kit LEX area was sanded away to make room for the new section. After placing it, I laminated more and more styrene, in order to make the body curvature. I then filled the area with Magi-sculpt. Careful while doing it this way. You need to mask off the surrrounding area to keep from ruining the detail on the kit. After the area was dried, I sanded it to shape and scribed in the new detail based on line drawings that I had bumped to 48th scale.

The Cockpit was two of the Cutting Edge sets. I had to do a lot of sanding in the rear cockpit to make it fit. I modified the front to have CRT's instead of dials.

The landing gear differs in the front in that there are two tires, not one. I DID use the sol tires here. In order to make the axle have two tires, I cut one from an old ESCI mig 23 kit and mated it to the Academy gear. The two worked like a charm. The mudguard is from the kit. I extended it with sheet styrene louvres.

I opted not to do the "thrust-Vectoring" burners. So sue me!! I'll do it on the SU35/37 when I complete that.

Paint was the norm (For me...) I start by painting the entire kit with Tamiya Flat black. I then polish this with a soft cloth and then pant the base colors on. In this case, I used Gunze. I mixed varying shades of blue and grey until I got the right 'look'. I didn't try to make an exact match, as differing photos tend to make the colors different. I simply went with what I thought looked "Cool".

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Model, Text and Images Copyright © 2002 by Steven St James
Page Created 24 January, 2002
Last Updated 25 January, 2002

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