Su-15MV Soviet Aggressor - FINISHED

[Weaver]

Oooh! How did i miss this till now!
Had a similar thought last year, using the PM kit. Was going to do a North American A-5 Vigilante scheme.
Gray, white, colourful splashes. As usual, put on the long finger. Will be following this.

Ironically, I have several of the PM kits and was going to use one for this, then I saw the Trumpeter one going cheap at the Huddersfield show, and since it was the same money as I'd just sold the Flagon A kit for, it seemed a fair swap. Beginning to wish I'd stuck with the PM one now....

[major]

Have to say, i kinda like the PM kits, coz you know what you're getting into. Nothing a hacksaw, and angle grinder and a tub of auto filler wouldn't cure!
And, at the end, you know you've made somthing out of it!

[Weaver]

Slow progress continues. I'm still trying to get the fuselage looking half-decent: the "deck" around the cockpits and the similar one around the nosewheel bay have very thin, bendy sides, and it's very easy to get them misaligned. The latter needed a shim under one edge as well.

I tried to use Humbrol polishable steel on the tail fairing, but it didn't stick properly without an undercoat, so I've sanded it back and undercoated it with rattle-can grey.

Wheel hubs have been masked with Eduard masks and painted green: probably need two coats. It's quite hard to get the masks on straight becuase they're so thin that they distort easily. I don't know why they don't make the outer diameter bigger so they're more stable: it's only the inner diameter than actually matters anyway.

Two sets of "Fakewinders" currently have their white paint drying. These are nominally 1/100th items from a Hobby Model Kits F-15: they're awful, but that's exactly what I need.... In case you're wondering, the Su-15UP can't just carry a pair of AA-2 Atolls on the inner wing pylons, because the pylons are too close to the fuselage and you can't move them further outboard because the undercarriage bays come close to the leading edge. 

[Weaver]

Okay, changed the name to Su-15MV (Modyeliruyemyiy Vrag = Simulated Enemy) on the advice of Old Wombat: thanks again!

STILL mucking about with the fuselage...

Not convinced that the nosewheel deck is blended in properly, but I'm sick of messing with it...

Intakes and splitters needed shimming out with a layer of plasticard to avoid a step in the outside line of the fuselage.

The fin is located with two pins, and Sod's Law, one of them is so far forward that it's in the bit I'm going to have to cut off to blend in the new spine. So I drilled the spine to take a new pin and drilled the fuselage to match... and the seam split.  So it's back in clamps with more glue in it.....

[deathjester]

Looking forward to seeing more of this - but...do you think that, now you've used so much glue on it, inside the fuselage is a perfectly formed replica of the kit made entirely from poly cement...

[Weaver]

Don't know about that, but I reckon if I took a pic of the inside of it I could get Evergreen to sponsor me...

Speaking of which: the lower rear fuselage seam cracked again while I was trying to sort other stuff out... I think the problem is that there's a long, straight run with not enough location pegs in it, so it can bow between the pegs. Anyway, had a brainwave. I'm trying to build it with the nozzle fairing separate until the end so that I can give the latter a nice metallic finish, so looking down the back end at the inside of the split seam, I realised that I could actually coat a long, flat piece of evergreen with glue and put in in with tweezers to support the joint. Worked like a charm....

Good job I had that to cheer me up because the next problem was the fin:

1. It's own location lugs are such a slack fit in their hole that your could put it on with about 3 deg bias either way if you wern't careful. Not a major problem, but not impressive.

2. Although it doesn't show up well in pics, the rear fuselage actually has a very slight "figure 8" shape to it, so the fin sits in a slight "valley". Shouldn't have been a problem.... but then Trumpeter made the curvature of the two fuselage halves different.... The result is that if you just glue the fin with it's base flat to the surface, it ends up leaning to the right at about 10 deg, and of course, the slack mounting pegs are no help at all. Cue much fettling of the fuselage and the fin.....

[PR19_Kit]

The more I read of this build the more I worry about even opening the box of the only Trumpeter kit I have, their RA-5C Vigilante..... 

[Weaver]

The more I read of this build the more I worry about even opening the box of the only Trumpeter kit I have, their RA-5C Vigilante.....  

From what I read on the web, they're very variable. For instance, the Shenyang J-8II, which is a very similar aircraft, is apparently very good, while the FBC-1 Flying Leopard has the whole forward fuselage too deep by about 15% !!!

I think the trick is:

1. Do the research. The kit may be very accurate or it may be rubbish. Decide what you want to fix or leave and go from there. For instance, the size and shape of the radomes on all the Su-15 kits have been criticised and there are aftermarket resin ones to correct them. The only reason I'm not using one of those is that mine has a non-standard nose anyway.

2. Don't be fooled by the presentation. They look lovely in the box, and all the surface detail gives the impression of quality, but there's a fair chance it's flat wrong or badly researched, and that the actual engineering fails when you start putting the pieces together. As others have remarked, you can't avoid the impression sometimes that nobody ever tried to build a test shot before they put it into mass production.

TEST FIT EVERYTHING, and be prepared to put in extra bracing, extra location pegs/plates, and do a lot of filing and sanding to make things actually fit or be the right shape.


This build of the RA-5C looks hauntingly familiar  : http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/27739-trumpeter-172-ra-5c-vigilante/

[NARSES2]

2. Don't be fooled by the presentation. They look lovely in the box, and all the surface detail gives the impression of quality, but there's a fair chance it's flat wrong or badly researched,

Absolutely. I've a couple that are stunners until you look a little more deeply and try a test fit. Others on the other hand are good kits

[PR19_Kit]

This build of the RA-5C looks hauntingly familiar  : http://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/27739-trumpeter-172-ra-5c-vigilante/

I'm starting to think that I should look out my long lost Airfix or Hasegawa Vigis now!

[Weaver]

Y'know, you'd think that when you have a radome with a circular base, a lip and two tabs, you couldn't really go wrong, could you? Ah, but Trumpeter are smarter than that...... This radome clicks and "locks" in four different positions: way to far to one side, slightly to far to the other side, slightly high and spot on. Choosing which you want is complicated by the fact that the fuselage bulge leading up to the radome is too big on one side, so there's going to be a step no matter what you do.... Cue more fetting......

Still, apart from that, progress is being made. The base of the spine fairing is currently setting in the vice, I've made the chin fairing in an easier way than I'd anticpated, and I've found a perfect glass "pimple" to be the camera lens in it's nose.

Piccies in a bit.

[Weaver]

Fuselage, spine base (long stepped piece), undernose fairing (tapered tube) and spine (folded rectangular sheet). The spine is now sat in the vice having the first section glued to the base: it's got to be glued in seactions and clamped because it's bent into a U-shape (so it's trying to spring back) and it has to change section halfway to go from "canopy section" to "fin section".




Nose wheel bay. The white line is the fillet I had to add to get the thing to sit level with the surface.




Underwing tanks. The idea is that the Su-15MV will carry empty tanks on the outboard wing pylons (empty because those pylons arn't plumbed for fuel) in order to simulate the outline of Phantom. However, the standard tanks have fins and would protrude behind the trailing edge, neither of which is true for Phantom tanks, so they're being "bob-tailed" by having their tail cones and fins removed. The blanking piece is a pivot pin from the Airfix Bloodhound. The story is that the protruding rod in the middle is a smoke can, triggered using the missile wiring, which is used to show when the aircraft has been hit.

[lancer]

2. Don't be fooled by the presentation. They look lovely in the box, and all the surface detail gives the impression of quality, but there's a fair chance it's flat wrong or badly researched,

Absolutely. I've a couple that are stunners until you look a little more deeply and try a test fit. Others on the other hand are good kits

I've also gpt a Trumpeter Vigi to build. you lot are beginning to scare me...

[Weaver]

2. Don't be fooled by the presentation. They look lovely in the box, and all the surface detail gives the impression of quality, but there's a fair chance it's flat wrong or badly researched,

Absolutely. I've a couple that are stunners until you look a little more deeply and try a test fit. Others on the other hand are good kits

I've also gpt a Trumpeter Vigi to build. you lot are beginning to scare me...

Have a look at that Britmodeller build I linked to. The Vigi is better than the Su-15 and gripes aside, it seems perfectly possible to make a decent model from it. I think, to be fair, that if these were 40-year old Airfix molds, everone would shrug their shoulder and put up with it. What's irritating is that the Trumpy ones were done in the last few years when, we keep being told, CAD/CAM and slide molds have made everything perfect. Trumpy however, (and DML in all fairness) seem to be on a mission to remind us of the CICO principle of computing: Crap In, Crap Out.

[deathjester]

Well, you can't really fault them for their efforts...they seem to have tried really hard to mess it up!