Su-15MV Soviet Aggressor - FINISHED

[Weaver]

Okay, some half-decent progress....

Fuselage mods:



Spine went on with much fettling. It's a strip of thin plasticard bent into an arch-section over a base of Evergreen strip that tapers halfway. Quite pleased with it now, although I thought at one point I'd screwed it up. I don't want it to fit too perfectly or look too smooth, because the real thing would be something knocked up by hand for half-a-dozen aircraft at most, and looking how rough some of the things were that were fitted to all the production aircraft....

The usual gothic collection of air scoops have bene added too. You really do have to wonder how much faster these things could go without them... Most of them went on okay: I drilled out the holes in the little ones at the back, which seem to be a bit too prominent, comparing them with photographs. The big ones over the wing roots were a problem. They're made in two pieces: a wedge-shaped base and then the scoop itself. The scoop sits partly on the wedge and partly on the fuselage, so it's base needs to be at two angles, which Trumpeter got right. What they didn't get right was that it also needs a step in it to deal with the thickness of the wedge, so I had to put that in myself, which is a right fiddle given that these bits are barely big enough to hold.


Nose mods:



I was going to do a more elaborate structure than this, but when I test-fitted it, I realised it was too much. This partly tapered tube was originally made for a different version of the spine, so that was a nice bit of recycling. It will eventually have a window on the front of it for a camera that records the mock combats. The back end of it was an interesting design problem. On the Phantom, the nosewheel bay has a single-piece side-opening door, so they just stuck a half-cone fairing on the door. On the Su-15, the nosewheel bay has left and right doors, and they have irregular bulges in them for the twin-wheel nosegear (which was added in the Su-15TM version). I though there was too much chance of quarter-cone additions not meeting properly and fouling the operation of the doors, so my solution is to have a triangular "fin" attached to the edge of one door which gives the right profile when it's closed.

On the standard aircraft, this area also has a hockey-stick aerial and (according to Trumpeter, but I can't find a real-world pic of it) a small pod that looks like an IRST sensor. I've left the IRST pod off, since the F-4E that's being simulated didn't have one, and stuck the hockey-stick on off-centre in about the same place the pod would have been: pics on the web seem to show it in about this location anyway.

[Weaver]

Wings on, canopy on (all four parts of it) canopy masks on, and it's now in paint:




I realised there was a problem with my plan to carry empty drop tanks on the wing pylons, namely that the tanks have holes to fit on the fuselage pylons' pegs, but the wing pylons have ridges to fit in grooves in the missile bodies. Solution: cut the ridges off the wing pylond and drill them for wires. The next problem was that the pylons are very thin, so the thickest wire I could fit into them was still way too small for the holes in the tanks. the solution to that was to glue solid Evergreen rod into the holes, let it dry properly, then drill it to the right size for the wires:

[sandiego89]

The spine looks good- keep it up!  Not much wing on her- must have been a ground gripper.....

-Dave

[Thorvic]

That looking rather tasty now its assembled  , just had a thought you could do it an Aggressor in US Navy style scheme as the Soviets would have face USN types as well (opens the options for a sister build to go alongside the first  )

[Weaver]

That looking rather tasty now its assembled  , just had a thought you could do it an Aggressor in US Navy style scheme as the Soviets would have face USN types as well (opens the options for a sister build to go alongside the first  )

Cheers!

That crossed my mind too: easier paint but more work in the decals. I'm working on the assumption that they wouldn't just copy actual markings and codes, but would go for "in the style of".

[Weaver]

The spine looks good- keep it up!  Not much wing on her- must have been a ground gripper.....

-Dave

It's quite interesting when you look at the numbers:

Su-15:

Wing Area : 394 sq.ft
Empty Weight : 23,973 lb
Loaded Weight : 37,920 lb
Wing Loading : 61 - 97 lb/sq.ft


F-4E:

Wing Area : 530 sq.ft
Empty Weight : 30,328 lb
Loaded Weight : 41,500 lb
MTO Weight : 61,795 lb
Wing Loading : 58 - 117 lb/sq.ft


So the Su-15 is in the right ball park to simulate the F-4E. Of course, wing loading is not the whole story, but then no aircraft is a perfect simulator of any other. The Su-25 had a "hot ship" reputation, but my impression is that that was mostly down to it's landing and take-off performance, which is not surprising when you consider that it had roughly the same wing loading as the F-4 but no slats, much less flap area and no blowing.

[Weaver]

First paint. Black on the nose and canopy, silver on the rear fuselage:




First masking. Nose cone, ventral fairing tip, part of the canopy frames (to make it look more like an F-4), anti-slip panels on the intakes, lower rear fuselage:




Now got a coat of grey undercoat drying.

[Weaver]

All over grey undercoat.




This is a car paint undercoat, but it's pretty close to Hu.64, which the instructions for my old Airfix F-4 specify for the underside. I think it's way to dark, so I'm going to do the underside with Hu.147 which is much lighter.

[PR19_Kit]

Why did you paint the back and silver on before you did the grey primer?

[Weaver]

I wanted to paint the black radome first and then mask it so that the mask was on the "narrow" end of the cone and got a better seal. I thought the grey primer might be okay as the underside colour and if that had been the case, then that would have been the right way round to do things. As it's turned out, I'm spraying a lighter shade on the underside, so I could have done all-primer first, then the black, then the mask.

The silver was just a case of exploiting the opportunity to get two colours on in the same session since they were at opposite ends of the plane.

[Weaver]

Well that was an entertaining hour, and mostly my fault...

Went to have a look at the first coat of Hu.147 on the parts, and it wasn't too good. I'd had the impression while I was spraying it that it wasn't covering too well, so I'd assumed it was because the undercoat was darker. However, thinking back over what I'd done, I suddenly realised that I'd made a mistake with the paint/thinner ratio and it was actually far too thin.

Jolly good, problem solved, got the bottle of too-thin grey and put a load more paint and thinners in it in much thicker proportions, picked up the can of cheap, nasty thinners to clean the syringe with, and dropped it....... right on the open jar of mixed paint, which went 50% on me, 50% on the floor.....

So now I have a fetching grey leg and no paint. Cleaned up, then checked the local small hobby shops, only to find that neither of them is open today (and one of them's closing.... ). Sat contemplating whether to spend fuel and parking money to go to Hobbycraft or wait 24 hours, when a thought struck me. When I did the Migina, I bought tins of just about every shade of grey, so maybe there was a tin of Hu.147 at the back of the drawer.

Success, there was a tin! Mind you, the five year old tin of Hu.147 wasn't exactly the same colour as the new tin of Hu.147, but it's good enough when you're mixing... So I made up another batch of thicker paint, and started spraying. Doing the misc bits, it was fine, but when I started doing the actual undersides, it didn't seem to be covering again. Played about with pressure and paint flow, changed the angle I was holding the brush, and it suddenly decided to feed again (it hadn't been before, no idea why...) so now I have a lovely paint run under the right wing root.....

Apart for the paint run (which is fixable) it's looking okay now, but sheesh....

(and no, I don't sell tickets.....)

[PR19_Kit]

If it was easy everyone would do it........... 

[Weaver]

Lower surfaces masked off and a coat of tan currently drying. Rather pleased with how it looks.

[Weaver]

Basic cammo done, and I have to say, I'm rather pleased with this. No runs, very little touch-up needed, the only minor problem is that I've managed to snap off the pitot tube base on the left wing, but that may not have worked out anyway.








The silver bit on the rear fuselage is going to be a faux Phantom "scallop". More work to do on that yet.

The grey bits over the wing roots and the wing fences are designed to look like the underside of the Phantom's dihedral outer wings.

The grey tip to the fin will end up looking like a USAF-style stripe once the fin-tip aerial is painting the standard Russian green.

There is still some masking on the canopy because there are clear coats to come yet. The idea is that there are black-painted areas on the frame to make them look bigger and less framed when seen from above.

Just realised I've forgotten to paint the topsides of the drop tanks....

[Thorvic]

Wow thats looking really good now its painted, that shot looking from the aft qtr showing the tan side of the long nose also made me think of the Thunderchief as well as the Phantom  .

Look forward to seeing this one finished and i guess it leaves it open to do a variety of Soviet Aggressors