Su-15UT Kitbash

[McGreig]

The McGreig Modelling Revival continues. After the Spitfires and the P-39, the next model to emerge from the "could be completed relatively quickly" group of half-finished projects is this Sukhoi Su-15UT (although it very nearly ended up in the "throw in the bin" group!)

This is finished as an air display machine. In reality, there is some doubt as to whether any Su-15s were ever painted red for displays although there is a poor quality  photo in an old hardcover Squadron/Signal book that appears to show two single seat Su-15s in this scheme. In any case, there is no evidence of the scheme being applied to a two seater and, if it had been, the underside would have almost certainly have been left aluminium.



However, this was not just a colour scheme change but also involved a limited degree of kitbashing and I didn't fancy applying an aluminium finish to the kitbashed undersurfaces.

The Su-15UT is the early version of the two seat trainer variant of the Flagon. It has the early style conical nose cone, a slightly different style of fin and a lot more scabbed on air intakes around the rear fusleage than the later Su-15UM which is the subject of the PM and Trumpeter kits.



The model is based on the 1/72 PM kit with the nose and fin replaced by items taken from a JV Jetkits resin Su-15. (You could probably do this more easily by combining parts from the Trumpeter Su-15 Flagon A and Su-15UM Flagon G kits, but this wasn't an option in those far off days when I started on this model - - - )



The nose from the resin JV Jetkits Su-15 takes a fair bit of  trimming and sanding to fit the PM kit. However, this was not what caused the problems - having done the difficult kitbashing bits, I almost ruined everything at the painting stage. Red is always a difficult colour to paint, even with an airbrush, and it really needs an undercoat of white or pale grey. Despite knowing this very well (and spraying white undercoats for the red bits on the various Spitfires that I've been doing recently) I charged ahead and sprayed red directly on to the Su-15 without applying any undercoat. As the kit was a mixture of dark grey plastic, brown coloured resin and Squadron white filler, the results were predictably unsatisfactory. So, of course, I stripped off the red and started again with an undercoat - - - err, well, ehrrm not exactly - in a fit of temporary (I hope!) insanity I simply kept spraying more and more coats of red. Eventually, the red was dense enough for the various materials not to show through the paint but it was also patchy, rough in places and, where it had been touched up and particularly round the canopy, it looked like several different shades of red.



By this time I was fairly well scunnered with the whole thing and the discovery that I'd mislaid the undercarriage parts finally put the ba' on the slates and the Su-15 was added to the "bin it" pile. However, I had this nagging feeling that because I'd put quite a lot of work into this, I should make one more attempt to salvage it. So I decided to give the canopy a coat of Klear to see what would happen. To my surprise this not only brightened up the transparent parts but also blended the patchy red into more or less one colour. So I then sprayed the whole airframe with a couple of coats of Klear and, miraculously, the patchwork red was transformed into a more or less uniform finish.



So, back on to the workbench. The undercarriage was stolen from another Su-15 that I'd been given at Telford last year and the red star decals sourced from an old Esci sheet for the Yak-9/La-7. The "06" came from an equally old Almark sheet. A final coat of varnish and suddenly it was finished. Not my best model but I'm still quite happy with it and it's a much better result than the bin! 

[chrisonord]

Nice looking bird there Mc Greig, one of my favorite old school soviet jets. The red paint kinda suits it too.
Chris

[NARSES2]

Oh that does look good 

[RussC]

Did one in hummingbird scale (1/144) a few years back. Prime ingredient is the F8II finback chinese fighter kit. Made mine as the straight wing SU-15A. The Entex Mig 23 "flipper" one of the worst kits in modelry can also be forced into a Su-15 build.

McGrieg's results are spectacular - 

[chrisonord]

Here is a kit bash using an SU-15 in 1/72nd scale and a 1/144th scale TU-22. The whole thing went together very easily too
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,28246.0.html
Chris

[McGreig]

Thanks for the positve feedback.

Did one in hummingbird scale (1/144) a few years back. Prime ingredient is the F8II finback

I like this - a really convincing result (and in such a small scale!) 

Here is a kit bash using an SU-15 in 1/72nd scale and a 1/144th scale TU-22.

Now that is an impressive model and, given that it's mostly Tu-22, one of the best scale-o-rama's I've seen. 

[Geoff]

Excellent builds.