BIG Russian Jet Groupie GB

VanceCrozier

Great work on that squiggly camo pattern Tex!

Thank you so much Vance!  Your compliment means a lot to me!!  I thought it would turn out a bit tighter, but oh well, lol.  I finally "justified" it thinking the painter in North Vietnam might've had a bit of "overspray" as well. 

Thanks again!  Gary

That is a fantastic looking paint scheme, I have seen it painted on the box art of the 1/32 scale kit, but never seen it actually built, well done, really great looking model there Tex. Now for that matter are you going to be starting the SU-22 Vance, and Dre if you're reading this do you have any pictures of the entire Soviet Air Force you are building? Pictures would be welcome, none of us have really posted anything new lately. I will do some work to the Mig 29 on Sunday as my new Uni course has started so I have my time cut up to the point where my free time on the weekdays is for sleeping only lol.

dean27

That is a fantastic looking paint scheme, I have seen it painted on the box art of the 1/32 scale kit, but never seen it actually built, well done, really great looking model there Tex. Now for that matter are you going to be starting the SU-22 Vance, and Dre if you're reading this do you have any pictures of the entire Soviet Air Force you are building? Pictures would be welcome, none of us have really posted anything new lately. I will do some work to the Mig 29 on Sunday as my new Uni course has started so I have my time cut up to the point where my free time on the weekdays is for sleeping only lol.

Thanks Dean!  This is the pic that inspired me:

Nice, I do really like that scheme, I wonder was it only the Fresco that got that paint scheme as a Fishbed would look pretty nice like that!

I'd say that camo scheme would look good interpreted on just about any Russian fighter- those colors are pretty close to what I used on my Su-25 and pretty close to the desert MiG-21 that was on the forums a few weeks back.  

I couldn't figure out how to link it in, but there's a video of the Chinese carrier-testing one of their Flanker clones....  it's probably on YouTube somewheres.

You mean this Dre, its the new F-11 Flying shark. Flanker outside, Chinese tech inside, possibly Flanker tech clone lol, I have heard the RADAR is a clone.

dean27

That is a fantastic looking paint scheme, I have seen it painted on the box art of the 1/32 scale kit, but never seen it actually built, well done, really great looking model there Tex. Now for that matter are you going to be starting the SU-22 Vance, and Dre if you're reading this do you have any pictures of the entire Soviet Air Force you are building? Pictures would be welcome, none of us have really posted anything new lately. I will do some work to the Mig 29 on Sunday as my new Uni course has started so I have my time cut up to the point where my free time on the weekdays is for sleeping only lol.

STARTED! Yes, I actually gave the cockpit surfaces a coat of pale blue last week, and I've done parts cleanup on some of the stores & flying surfaces, just nothing worth taking a picture of yet. Hoping to have some alone-time with it this weekend though.

Yep, Dean, that is the video I was thinking of.    Looks like the Chinese have started to figure out at-sea air ops....  hard to believe that the first ship landings/take-offs were way back in 1911with craft not that much more advanced than the Wright Bros.

Yeah I hope this is a sign of Trumpeter or Hobbyboss making this aircraft in 1/48 or 1/32 scale

I have just seen this it makes me so so happy, the reason is that I do not have to scratchbuild a back seat HUD, I thought I was going to have to make one but as you can see this is not going to be the case!

So six months so far and this is where I'm at, I am happy with it so far, I have started back on the cockpit with more detali, some of you may remember I had to scratchbuild the cockpit side walls and added detail to the seats, well it's where I started on the model and it's where I am back near the finish, I have dicided to give this to a friens who loves Russia and has been many times, in fact his girlfriend is in the Latvian army, she started her career in the Red army back in the 80's.

Dean, got any tighter pics of that cockpit work before the pilots took their seats?  

I did some color work on my Su-27UB's engine panels yesterday, I still have one more section and the burner cans to finish painting/coloring before I can move onto getting the rest of it built up and painted.

I'm giving hard thought to scratching up a set of the burners in the closed position as that ought to be reasonably easy to do (he says now, knowing nothing of the headache just unleashed!).

Hi Dre, no I don't have any pictures of the model before the pilots were in, I did nit really have a camera at that stage, tomorrow in the natural daylight I will try and get some shots inside the cockpit as best I can, to be honest man I have to say this has been one hell of a slog but worth it, also I had another model published in the online gallery, it was from over a year ago, I had forgotten about it. It's the M1A2 Abrams with the mine plow, check it out! I am really pleased about that I have had 10 models published in the online gallery now!

I didn't even know that you did armor!  Congratulations.

Yeah I like making Armour it's great as I love to make them dusty, rusty, scratched etc... Things you can't do to aircraft.

Armor can be fun, but I got really tired of all the road wheels used by ze germans...

Hey Dre what happened to you pictures of the tanks?

Also any of the Frogfoot?

Here was the last piece of armour I made, its the Academy Merkava I think this is a really cool looking tank, back to Russian Jets and I have painted 5 coats of paint by hand on to the Migs canopy and I will varnish it soon just to prevent any scratches.

Also I know it's a Russian Jet GB but I posted this for Dre to see as we happened to discover we both like a bit of armour as well, I am not sure if it is allowed as the images of Dre's tanks are gone, and if these are prohibited then let me know and I will remove them.

Nah, they're not prohibited but I pulled mine cuz someone in my office called me a show-off for posting them....  people are weird, my cow-orkers even more so.

Armor is fun, or at least i used to think so until a few years back when I just lost the interest in building it...  I'll get back to it one day when the joy of fuselage seams fades.

I still haven't finished that Frogfoot and that's just sad as there is maybe an hour's worth of work left to do.   Just lazy I guess...   but it does leave that time to work on the Flanker a little more.   I have to be in the right mood to sit down and work at the bench- I just can't plop my butt down and get busy.

I know exactly what you mean, I'm the same, If I am not in the mood I will just do a bad job so I don't bother until I actually feel in the right mood

Here is a video I saw, it's the SU-27UB thought it might give you inspiration Dre for your Russian Air Force!

Inspired or not, I do like that clean configuration....  

Hey, guys:

I'm still here...! Like I've mentioned, I'm slooooooooow. :-)

Dean, that's an awesome looking Merkava! I salute you armor guys and all the weathering you do. I've been tempted by the Dark Side more than a few times, mostly by German tanks. And thanks for posting that Flanker video. Man, that plane is a BEAST. Just makes me more amped to tackle my Eduard Su-27 (the Frogfoot is just a warm-up).

Dre, this quote cracked me up: ".....when the joy of fuselage seams fades." So poetic!

In any event, I'm almost done with landing gear, ordnance, etc. on the Frogfoot. See pics below. All this PE is giving me fits. Each sub-assembly is like a small kit unto itself. I've spent probably two weeks just on the Kh-58s alone (even though my online research seems to show only the Su-25KT/39 carries them, I'm all "F-it! Gonna have fun with this build"). The decals for only one missile has taken me three days to apply. Sheesh. 

But I should be done decaling the second this week, and then I can start painting the bottom of the bird.

PB

PS--Last pic shows the Eduard pylons in place (except for the Kh-58 rails, which are innermost).

Wow looks really good so far, I cant wait to see the finished version.

Love the blast of red that the missiles will give to the finished product.

Looking good, Porkbits.   There are a lot of decals on those birds...and the missiles...

Thanks, guys! Yeah, Dre, I think there are about 50+ decals on each of those Kh-58s. No joke. And I put on every one of them because I like inflicting pain on myself for some reason.

Vance, that's what I was thinking--the red will be a nice bit of color against the overall green camo scheme. There are also other red bits in airframe decals (especially the tail art, which is very involved), so it should look nice (if not exactly accurate).

50+ decals per Kh-58??   I didn't have that many in 1/32... except for every access panel or hatch on the airframe.   I guess that the Russians like to read their aircraft as well as fly them.

Close to that! There are these teeny tiny little red crosshair-looking decals (probably "Don't use hook here" indicators or something, about a single millimeter across) that you apply to the base of the fins. There are four on each SIDE of each of the four fins, so that's 32 of just those little guys (was my math right?). Then throw in another set of  9 stencils for the rear fins, one that goes on each side of each rear fin, then you add the five or six stencils that go on each side of the nose, plus the big serial number on one side, plus two other warning stencils that wrap around the entire body of the missile and you've got.....a lot of pain in my shoulders and back this morning. :-)

But I'm done, so now it's on to pre-shading the bottom of the Frogfoot a bit and then spraying the blue/gray. It'll be nice to work on a surface area larger than one micron, that's for sure.