Leoman Su-9/11 Whiffs

[McGreig]

SAM is currently running a series on "100 kits to build before you die". Predictably, the focus seems to be on fit and detail – recent suggestions have been the 1/72 Tamiya F4U-1, the 1/48 Hasegawa Harrier GR.7 and the Eduard 1/48 Fokker Dr.1.

Which got me thinking that a lot of my personal favourite kits are the exact opposite of this   A good example is the Leoman Sukhoi Su-9/11. I buy these when I see them at shows or on eBay, so I've accumulated a reasonable amount over the years and I always enjoy building them

Leoman was a pioneering resin kit producer in the Eighties, based in Glendale, California. They (he?) specialised in Soviet types, particularly Sukhois, producing 1/72 kits of the Su-9/11, Su-15 and Su-17/22. Ultimately (late Eighties?) they produced two injection moulded plastic kits of the Su-9 and Su-11 (essentially the same kit with different noses) and then disappeared. (The Hobby Craft Su-22 Fitters were clearly based on the Leoman resins, so Leoman has had a sort of an afterlife - - -)

At first glance, the Leoman Sukhois are not promising – they look crude, the raised detail is too prominent, parts are simplified, they look too chunky and test fitting shows that the fit is not that great.

But - - - -

Surprisingly, when you apply a little filler and give a light sanding to the raised detail, the appearance of the kit improves dramatically. It's still a bit too chunky and the canopy sits too high but, with the addition of some details such as aerials and intakes, you get a nice looking model. And I will always have a soft spot for anyone who was doing Soviet stuff back in the Seventies and Eighties when information was poor and there weren't that many kits available.

The first build is the Su-11. I was originally going to do this as an aerobatic team aircraft based on an old Maverick profile but I've done a few of these recently and decided to focus instead on the fact that, unlike the smaller MiGs, the Sukhois were never exported. So I thought of a likely export customer and now we have the Iraqi Su-11:









The second build is based on the Su-9. In the early stages of MiG-21 development, MiG tested a wing with reduced sweep on the outer panel in order to allow a missile rail to be fitted to the wing tip. Their conclusion was that this offered no advantage over the under-wing pylon and the development went no further. Well, while I've never seen any photos, I'm sure that I read that Sukhoi had tried the same experiment but now I can't find the written reference anywhere, so maybe I'm just imagining it  

In any case, this is the Su-9 with a modified wing and wingtip missile rails:









The Su-9 was actually built several years ago, but I was never happy with it, mostly because its aluminium finish showed up the work on the wing no matter what I did to smooth and blend the join. Then it got damaged and spent a couple of years stored in a box of damaged and incomplete models. It came to mind when I was doing the Su-11 so I got it out, repaired the damage, did a bit more work on the wing and decided to see if changing the colour scheme would help. I left the canopy, intake ring and rear fuselage in aluminium  and sprayed the rest in light grey which, in my opinion anyway, has transformed the model and improved its appearance by several hundred percent.

This last photo is not a whiff but I've included it because it is another Leoman Su-9 (and because it looks weird). It is a real-world aerodynamic test bed with foreplanes mounted in the  vertical plane:

[Gondor]

Nice builds 

Gondor

[Dizzyfugu]

The Iraqi Su-11 looks nice. 

[Weaver]

Very nice - well done!

It's funny how the Su-7 was widely exported but not the 9 & 11. I suspect it was because the latter two were PVO-Strany interceptors rather than FA aircraft, and very few interceptors other than the MiG-25 were ever cleared for export. Maybe they thought the Americans might find out too much about Soviet air defences if they got hold of one?

[NARSES2]

They are nice mate 

[CSMO]

I have built one and it was a pretty rough kit. I can't believe somebody bought it on e-Bay and liked it. If you go whacking, sanding, and puttying on one, it makes a great basis for a "Whiffer" very nice job on yours!  Adios, Larry.

[McGreig]

Thank you 

It's funny how the Su-7 was widely exported but not the 9 & 11. I suspect it was because the latter two were PVO-Strany interceptors rather than FA aircraft, and very few interceptors other than the MiG-25 were ever cleared for export. Maybe they thought the Americans might find out too much about Soviet air defences if they got hold of one?

That's an idea I hadn't thought about. I've always assumed (without any evidence or research ) that it was probably a cost issue.

When the Indian Air Force chose the MiG-21 over the Lightning, Bill Gunston quotes the Indian Air Attache as saying: "Your country had nothing to offer but the Lightning, which we assessed as having almost exactly the same capability in performance and weapons for three times the price and three times the fuel consumption"

Given that the maximum speed, range and altitude are pretty much the same for the Su-9 and the MiG-21 (and the MiG's rate of climb is better) I have assumed that potential customers would feel the same way about a MiG-21 v Su-9 choice even if the cost differentials weren't as extreme as with the Lightning.

The Su-9's advantages to the Soviet PVO were presumably in being an all-weather fighter from the start and being able to carry heavier or more effective missiles (although its original beam-riding Alkalis were fairly ineffective for air combat) but I don't think that these issues would have been that important for most potential customers (except maybe the Chinese, who developed their own J-8 after the Sino-Soviet split).

I have built one and it was a pretty rough kit. I can't believe somebody bought it on e-Bay and liked it.

Yes, I can see that it's an odd choice for a favourite kit and I can't really explain it myself but I have built four, three of which are on this thread and I have another on the go. I build Unicraft kits as well - maybe it's my Scottish Presbyterian background coming out - nothing's good unless it's difficult and, ideally, you shouldn't be enjoying yourself at all - - -