1/72 Hobby Boss Su-47 Berkut - side project

mchoo2005 · February 09, 2011, 05:52:32 AM

In the past week, I've been working on this side project on/off while waiting for paint/glue/putty to dry on my main project (F-22 whif aggressor). I'm treating this project as more of a distraction really....

I will use this camo pattern... As far as the colour goes, I'll be more than likely using the same colours as the F-22 whif aggressor, just to make my life a tad easier.

Looking at the parts, I have a feeling that it's gonna be a quick build. I was initially going to build this as in-flight bird too, but... I'm not entirely certain anymore. Still somewhat inclined towards in-flight... I'll decide in the next day or two....

Anyway.... I noticed some weird protusions on the bottom fuselage. They're probably meant to be some kind of antenna, but I don't like the look of 'em, so I sanded 'em off. Besides, as far as I can tell from looking at limited number of pics avail on airliners.net, the real aircraft does not appear to have those.

Cockpit and seat are EXTREMELY basic and barren. Decals for side panels are too short. Also, the flight stick is grossly over-scaled (not to mention overly basic!). Oh well.... $:-\$

BTW... As can be seen in pic above, main gear wells are absolutely devoid of details! Which by itself makes me leaning more towards in-flight....

Read somewhere that Flanker cockpit colour is typically blue-green-ish. So, decided to mix up some Air Superiority Blue (LifeColor UA037 - FS35450) with Gunze H302 (Green FS34092). In hindsight, might've looked better if I had used Light Green or Lime Green... Oh well... never mind... The black was Tamiya X-18 (Semi-gloss black)

Glued the LERX underneath the top fuselage... Applied some putty... Will sand tomorrow....

Also glued the tub to the bottom fuselage...

Thanks for looking!

saintkatanalegacy · February 09, 2011, 06:45:22 AM

nice

would be awesome as well to see a navalized version like in SP forums

hmmm... wasn't the real Su-47's stick on the side?

PR19_Kit · February 09, 2011, 07:26:57 AM

Those protrusions look like badly clipped flow gates to me, and I'll bet those mouldings came sprue-less in the box? I have a Hobby Boss Fw-190D and it has exactly the same type of protrusions too.

There's always the possibility that Focke-Wulf and Sukhoi collaborated in this Whiff-World of course....

mchoo2005 · February 09, 2011, 01:04:29 PM

Quote from: PR19_Kit on February 09, 2011, 07:26:57 AM
Those protrusions look like badly clipped flow gates to me, and I'll bet those mouldings came sprue-less in the box? I have a Hobby Boss Fw-190D and it has exactly the same type of protrusions too.
[/quote
That's what I was thinking too when I first saw 'em... one of the reasons why I simply removed 'em.

They actually came in sprue.

In general, the moulding quality was actually not that bad. In fact, I think the engraved lines are actually better than Italeri's

Quote from: PR19_Kit on February 09, 2011, 07:26:57 AM
There's always the possibility that Focke-Wulf and Sukhoi collaborated in this Whiff-World of course....
hahahahaha! good one!

mchoo2005 · February 10, 2011, 03:01:23 AM

Thanks Qian!

Here's some update.....

I just noticed tonight some REALLY NASTY molding defect on the kit. Check out the pic below....

Those curved lines were actually scratches. Judging by the look of 'em, it must've been bad mold, rather than scratched during packing and/or transit. Frustrating!

So what I've done is... I brushed highly thinned Tamiya putty over 'em. See the pic below... I'd need to re-scribe some of the panel lines. I hope there'll be no more nasty surprises lurking in the shadow...

Here's the pic of the whole of top fuselage... You might notice there're a couple of spots where I applied putty. They were remains of molding tool that I cut, sanded off, then puttied.

I also installed the domed nut for the tripod mount using epoxy glue. I'm gonna reinforce the epoxy with Milliput later, once the glue had hardened enough.

....And closed off all the gear bays....

Thanks for looking!

Army of One · February 10, 2011, 05:35:55 AM

Lookin good.....keep going.....waiting to see how your paint scheme turns out....

mchoo2005 · February 13, 2011, 02:11:25 AM

Some update.... Joined the top and bottom fuselage halves. As expected, saw lots of seam lines to fill...

Right wing... not too bad... BTW... the gap on the leading edge is meant to be there, according to the pics of real Berkut I found on Airliners.net.

Left wing... Hmmm... that step will be a bit challenging. Will have to lay down a few layers of putty there, I reckon. Does anyone know of a better/easier way?

Wing root needs a bit of filling, but no major drama there. The seam lines running along the side of the engine intake there shouldn't be too bad. Most of that area will be covered by the canards. Still, just to be on the safe side, I'll apply a bit of putty there.

Nose section.... Again, not too bad. Fully expect to get this anyway...

Thanks for looking!

bearmatt · February 13, 2011, 02:36:17 AM

Serious modeling here!
I'm looking fwd to the final result. Keep going on

sotoolslinger · February 13, 2011, 12:04:08 PM

Neato. Looking forward to more

pedrospe · February 14, 2011, 07:20:05 AM

looks promising, i also like the camouflage you choose, it's a lot better than the, "all black" used on the real aircraft.

regards

Pedro

mchoo2005 · February 23, 2011, 03:01:55 AM

Boy oh boy.... This kit does not really have that many parts to make up the main fuselage. But... DANG! What little there are either did not really fit that well, or needed a lot of work to fix!

One of the worst parts was the jet intake! I had to use quite a bit of putty to fill the gap between the intakes and the fuselage.

I actually wasn't planning to use pre-shading, but... after spraying the black around the cockpit, I had some left over in the airbrush cup, so decided to pre-shade some parts of the aircraft....

I also had a temporary lapse of judgement by spraying the turbine with Mr Metal Color aluminum. I should've used flat white instead.... After all the "weathering" effects are applied, can't really see the aluminum underneath. Oh well...

Tried something different for the exhausts.... Sprayed the "lower" half with Tamiya Gun Metal, then sprayed the other half with left-over paint that I concocted a year ago (I think it was Mr Metal Color Aluminum and Dark Iron @ 50:50). Then, I "weathered" 'em with pretty much all of the Tamiya Clear paints that I have (clear blue, clear orange, clear red, and smoke). Sprayed a tad too much clear blue on one of the areas... oh well... I still like the effect....

Thanks for looking!

sotoolslinger · February 23, 2011, 06:41:38 AM

Very nice

Like the exhausts.

ChernayaAkula · February 23, 2011, 04:55:21 PM

Yeah, nice work so far!

Thinking this Sukhoi might also look the part in the Mod Eagle scheme and with US markings.....

mchoo2005 · February 23, 2011, 05:15:09 PM

At one point, I was actually thinking of building this beast as an aggressor, which I still might.... I think I still have enough TwoBobs Blue Fox Bandits decals for 2 planes....

Ian the Kiwi Herder · February 24, 2011, 02:28:14 PM

Like where this is headed. Very good work so far.

Ian