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Masking insanity:

Well, as the man says, here goes nothing...!

Hope everyone is well.

PB

I never knew about it either until I saw Fly said he used it on his thread, it's a pretty good looking F-15!

Interesting--well, maybe I'll try the Post-It notes first and hope that a low PSI doesn't blow them off the surface. If that doesn't work, I'll try the sealer (which I didn't know about). Thanks!

Well alclad have an aqua gloss sealer which doesn't diminish the shine on the finish, look at the F-15 build by Fly and you'll see he has used it, personally I just masked the panels as normal, I didn't wait long enough like the 24hrs after masking so I had a little residue but I managed to use micromesh which works well to buff the paint so it was ok.

Well, I tried the Post-It note deal and they just blew away under the air from the AB...  so that's when I tried to use Tamiya tape.   Which melted into the paints I was masking.  

I'm curious to the answer  for this as well, PB.

Thanks for info, Dean. I haven't done a kit conversion, so dunno, might just wait for Trumpeter to release a proper Su-35. How long could that be? ;-)

OK, another Alclad question: it seems that at some point I might need to mask off certain panels to spray a different Alclad shade. How do you do that without ruining the finish of the previous color? I know that some builders use Post-It notes because the adhesive is not that tacky, but wondering what you guys do.

Thanks!

One more thing abou SU-35 that's not obvious is the huge speed break is not on the SU-35, instead the vertical stabilisers rotate outwards, or inwards, I forget I think outwards I read. Anyway you would have to eliminate the break on your kit for SU-35, not hard to do though.

That's a pretty informative video, Dean.   Thanks for the link.    That Su-35 can really haul freight...

Trumpeter, you've got the market for this family in 1/32, when are you going to make the new versions??

Thanks, guys! Some really good reference stuff. T3chDad, couple of interesting photos that show 56 a lot more weathered than I thought it was. Also one great shot of the burner cans that will come in handy soon. :-)

Oh right thanks t3chdad my laptop is from ww2 i think so I just need a new one lol.

Thanks for the pic Porkbits.  I didn't have that one. I do have quite a few more.  Here's a link to a zip with all of my Blue 56 stuff. (8MB)  t3chdad.com/.../Blue56.zip

Dean, I've seen Java (or lack thereof) cause the problem you're describing.  Also, you might want to try it in another browser.  For example, rich formatting won't function for me with Firefox at work where security software is blocking some specific java libraries from being retrieved from the FSM server...but it works fine with IE on the same machine.

Yes and the video shows a good representation and pretty good reference if you do make it on what you can use to arm your su-35 as all configurations for anti air, ground and ship are there.

Lol, guess that answers my question, Dean! :-) In short, the SU-35 is even more bad ass. OK, someone needs to make this kit, too.

I wanted to post a video but I can't post photos or videos at the moment as the rich formatting isn't working for me. anyway have a look at this link Dre.

www.youtube.com/watch

There's a few, the SU-35 in reality doesn't have much in common with SU-27 other than outwards appearance, SU-35 has no pitot tube on the radome, the infa-red targeting system is on the right hand side of where the pilot sits like the SU-33, look at the aft end of the aircraft and you will notice the fuselage is slimmer on the stinger section, the production SU-35 has thrust vector Saturn engines, the cockpit has two large multi colour/function screens rather than many instruments, plus SU-35 is a multi function aircraft rather than just an air superiority fighter. also if you look on the underside of the slab stabilisers there are many more antennas, plus SU-35 carries DRFM digital countermeasures which mimic radars controlling missiles fired at it and deflect the missiles away from the SU-35, also SU-35 has twin nosewheel, I have though to of doing  an SU-35 but you will need both the SU-30 and SU-27 kits and you will have the parts required but you will have to do surgery to the aft end to slim down the tail of the fuselage.

Unfortunately, the damage was entirely inflicted upon the louvres by my ham hands. :-)

Since we're on the topic of Flankers:

1) T3chDad, ran across this nice topside shot of Blue 56 showing a little wear. Could probably use it as an argument to do some light panel line highlighting. Can also see a glimpse of the engines with the blueing effect in, well, full effect:

2) Apparently an Su-35..? Man, this scheme is siiiiiiiiiick. Anyone know anything about this bird? Could you convert the Academy kit into a 35? I don't see many differences b/w 35 and 27....

I can imagine that those louvers have mangled a few fingers in their time... even yours?

Funny how much masking is on these things.

Just one photo--as there's nothing too exciting to show--just a lot of tedious masking around and inside the intakes (ah, intakes...fun!) to add detail (blue detail around openings and metallic gray bands). And also added white to the two bits on the side of the intakes and the darker gray on the side part of the gear wells. 

I'm going to let the Future dry overnight then if I have time, attempt to paint the nose tomorrow or Thursday.

Cheers,

PB

PS--Ground crews are hard on those louvres, no? ;-)

Nice, Dean. Those look suitably burned. :-)

I'm going to try not to stress (too much) and have fun with it--like you guys suggested, light coats, try different shades and mixing and see what I end up with.

Money well spent for the engines PB the stuff lasts a good while too, considering you're basically painting the rear of the aircraft, here's what the combination of pigments, alclad and tamiya clear blue and red looks like, I used hot metal blue as well from alclad.

and in the light it looks different,

Nice, Dre! Post some pics when you get re-started again? :-)

Dean, lol, I didn't want to bore you guys with too many updates, so I was going to wait, but...getting down to the painting nitty gritty. This is where the hard work of construction starts to pay off (usually); she's almost starting to look like Blue 56 (at least from the bottom). :-)

Had to resolve some airbrush problems over the weekend (of course, because that's this build), but after that hurdle, detailed the intakes. Tonight I'm going to tackle painting the nose. After that, I'll apply the camo on both sides of the forward fuselage (beneath the cockpit), then the camo on the upper surfaces.

I ordered about US $70 (eeek, don't tell wife) worth of Alclad paints, primer, and Tamiya weathering pigments so they'll be here when I'm ready to dive into the engines. Gulp.

I can post some pics later tonight, EST, if you're interested.

Hope everyone is doing well!

PB

I can't wait to see more of this build PB, hows it coming together?

Woohoo- I've finally gotten all of the old paint off of my Su-27UB C after 4 days of spraying Easy Off oven cleaner, waiting and then scrubbing it with an old toothbrush.   This stuff won't remove paint quickly, but it does work eventually and fairly thoroughly.   I need to go back and wash the aft section with a little soap to remove any remaining chemicals and then I can begin to finish this thing once again.  

T3chDad- those Ukrainian birds look great!   Nice work to retouch them from low-res imagery!!

Nice! Those look great. The Eduard kit comes with all the necessary markings so I should be all set, though.

For those of you that are working-on or may build Ukraine's "Blue 56"....here are some images I just completed for custom decals in preparation for my build.  These were made from some low-rez photos I found on the inarwebs with perspective correction and a ton of retouching.  I tried to keep some of the graffiti/spray can look but up the detail so they could be used for most any scale and look crisp and clean.

Eagle for the right virtical stab:

...and the eagle with Ukraine flag for the left side fuse:

I will do Dre, Hannants told me to get in touch Monday if it's still nowhere to be seen, pretty annoying but I really want the stuff so I'm not gonna leave it.

Porkbits

T3ch--Spotted em! Those are the North Star burner cans. You probably don't want to know what I went through, but....I ended up buying not one, not two, but three sets of those things. Yep. Three. I probably spent as much on those as I did on the whole kit. Oh well.

<snip>......horrible pain and suffering....</snip>

Thanks for the info....I think I'll just stick with the stock cans.  Yours look great though!

I too know the hassle of waiting on the mail to get me my decals.   It took several months, some emails and a phone call to someone who doesn't speak English all too well to get the 1/32 Begemot Su-27 stencil sets sent from Mother Russia.  

But, the wait was worth it in the end.   Keep after the sender, Dean.

Lol, Dre, this is true, I'm just ham fisted sometimes, erm, all the time. :-)

Thanks, Dean. Maybe the nose looks perfect *because* there's tape on it? Hee. There's definitely some leftover shape issues, but I think I got it generally OK (I'll just have to photograph from the "best" angles). At least I hope so, as  I sanded the #$%#@ thing for about ten hours.

From my pulled back perspective you also can't see the kinda mess I made of the rear stab-to-fuselage join, and that nose seam that I didn't quiiiiiiite get rid of. :-( Hoping that the darker gray camo and "56" decal will cover most of it because I don't feel like tearing back into the paint job and making things worse.

In any event, that sucks re: mail issues. So frustrating because there's not much you can do.  I hope everything shows up eventually. :-( I ordered the first set of cans from Latvia and they arrived surprisingly quickly. Then, of course, I later found that Sprue Brothers carries them here in the States. Oops.

Looks great, you can see the nose is pretty much perfect even though there's tape on it. The nose, seat and decals I ordered have so far been lost in the post, have to say I'm losing patience with Royal Mail, mainly because the parts I ordered basically equalled the price of the kit, and also because they're useless. I am useless with photo etch but those cans are really impressive and makes me curious to try them myself, though having said that there's no guarantee they'll arrive from Latvia considering who's delivering them lol, sorry venting a bit here. PB looks great!