I take a look at Italeri’s aged mould of one of Russia’s most iconic fighters.
Subject: Sukhoi Su-27 “Flanker”
Brand: Italeri
Scale: 1/72
Rating: 2/5
The Kit
Upon opening the box I was surprised to discover that there were only two main sprue sections - two very large sprue sections, to be fair. An important detail to note about this kit is the raised panel lines, which will disappoint many of the more keen modellers; however, considering this mould was originally created in 1990, I suppose it’s to be expected. Included in the sprues is a hefty payload of missiles - not the most detailed I’ve seen but bearable enough to look at - again I’d be opting for a clean loadout, probably a result of me still having RIAT fever and wanting to give my aircraft a presentable “airshow” look.
The kit gives you three different countries to portray your Flanker in the colours of - the Russian Air Force, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (China) and the Vietnamese Air Force. Decals aside, the paint job for the Russian and Vietnamese aircraft are identical, but the PLAAF Flanker’s livery is a unique flat grey colour. Naturally I opted to build mine as the Russian aircraft.
The sprue also provides what appears to be a pair of large flat pieces, and I figured that they may be canards like those seen on the Su-33 (the naval variant of the Flanker) - the instructions also leave these out entirely, so perhaps it’s another example of how this tooling has been frequently reused over the years to allow the modeller to build alternative variants. This is something I have seen in model kits before (including the Special Hobby Buchón which will be covered in a future review) so if you’re building this kit don’t be alarmed when you finish with two large pieces looking like they should belong somewhere!
The Build
Building the model itself you will face many classic Italeri tropes - the cockpit section is generally simple and not as detailed as some other 1/72 kits I’ve seen. Instead of decals the cockpit instruments are moulded and expected to be painted - normally, I rush this stage as the typically black cockpit sections make these small details hard to see in the first place, but like many Soviet post-war aircraft the Su-27 often has a rather unique-looking blue cockpit and I wanted to reflect this in my model. I used Tamiya’s XF-83 to do this - based on reference images some Flanker cockpits were more of a toned down blue than others, and this is the effect I was going for.
Once this was out of the way, construction continued smoothly. Using clay and weights stuffed into the nose section I ensured that the Flanker wouldn’t be too tail-heavy, and joined the two fuselage halves - rather than the halves being divided vertically like most other models I’ve built, the fuselage is divided into a top section and a bottom section which is something I’m not used to! Nonetheless, the fuselage section was assembled and the engine exhausts were fitted entirely with relative ease, though I found that the open undercarriage section was very unclear about what goes where - I’ve sort of wrecked the whole rear undercarriage area with cement trying to fit the gear doors, and truthfully I still don’t know if they’re arranged correctly - this is again due to the unclear instructions, and I found reference images to be more helpful in assembling this section than the actual guide!
The kit sort of made up for this with the general ease of assembly of the landing gear struts. Like other Italeri kits, I found the landing gear to slot into place almost perfectly, and even when I accidentally snapped one of the rear struts in half I was able to repair it easily. The landing gear generally also feels more secure than those on some other models I’ve built.
If your build goes anything like mine, you’re likely to find that you’ll require some putty to seal the gaps between the wings and the fuselage, as well as around sections of the engine intakes. But once those were sealed with filler, the kit was already assembled and ready for painting. Not bad for an aircraft so big!
Painting
Unusually, I found painting the model to be more of a challenge than building it. This was because Italeri paints are inaccessible where I live, so I have to resort to using alternative paint brands such as Tamiya and Citadel - not that I’m complaining about that! At first, I tried to paint the aircraft using a combination of Tamiya and Citadel paints that resulted in a very flamboyant and unrealistic colour combination.
In an attempt to find a more suitable set of paints I came back with Tamiya lacquer paint and some more pale blue Citadel paints... I was quick to learn the hard way that lacquer paint is not made with hand brush-painters in mind, so I resorted to the Citadel paints which worked like a charm. The grey camouflage pattern areas required some mixing of Administratum Grey and Blue Horror (the colour I used for the majority of the airframe) for a result closer to my desired look.
Now, after some final checks it was time to apply the decals - an interesting experience. This is where Italeri’s unclear instructions took a time to shine - even on larger surfaces and with larger decals it was puzzling to figure out the precise placement of decals, and smaller ones were even harder to figure out. Some decals were labelled incorrectly on the instructions when compared to the decal sheet, and others weren’t even present at all. I applied as many decals as I could, but some I simply chose not to include whatsoever. It’s a good thing the decals were of a decent quality.
Despite these difficulties, the Flanker was now in a presentable state - but I wanted to experiment with some weathering techniques. Using Citadel’s Nuln Oil I doused the engine exhausts with a black wash, and then used the same wash to essentially dry brush the wings and fuselage to give it a well-used look. I also used a brown wash around the engine area, and some black powder from the Revell weathering set to create a smoke effect surrounding the miniature 30mm cannon on the starboard side of the Flanker’s nose.
I could now call the Flanker done.
Conclusion
Overall, I had a mixed experience building this kit. There are many good points and many bad - the fitting is very good in most areas and the kit isn’t overly complicated to build, making it a very forgiving kit for a new modeller. However, the kit particularly suffers from raised panel lines, lack of detail and particularly unclear instructions, which are probably all lingering problems from the age of the mould. To wrap it up, I’d say the kit is not great, but not terrible; if you’re after a Flanker kit I’d probably look at other companies, such as Zvezda or Revell.
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