The Atom Furnace: Codename: FLANKER

The above photo appeared in the September 15, 1987 edition of the Chicago Tribune. A rare sighting of the recently introduced 4th Gen Soviet fighter, NATO codenamed FLANKER A. Having had a fascination with the Cold War aviation race, I dug deeper, travelling to downtown Chicago to Kroch's, the go-to bookstore for hard to find items. I was able to pick up a copy of Jane's "Aircraft, Strategy, and Operations of the Soviet Air Force"

Published only a year prior to this sighting, the book had only general ideas about the aircraft and its capabilities, but it was visually striking, seeming to have leapfrogged ahead from our Eagles and Tomcats. Its gestation period was a protracted one, taking years and the lives of multiple test pilots, 7 years from specifications to first flight, and another 8 to reach operational service. The secretive Soviets provided little information about their development projects. It would take the fall of the Soviet Union and a debut at an international airshow to demonstrate what this big plane was capable of. The design has since gone through many versions and redesigns, spawning two seat trainers, side-by-side attack versions, and navalized versions for carrier use. And it still serves today, most recently in Syria.

By the nineties enough was known for me to hope someone would come up with a large scale model of the Flanker, and Academy delivered in 1995.

Now superseded by other more recent versions, in its day having all recessed panel lines, photo etched details, and rubber tires was leading edge. I determined I wouldn't build it until I had the skills to do it justice...

----Life Happens. 26 years pass----

All Things Scale selects Cold War as the theme for the next Group Build. I have an unstarted Flanker. Now is The Time!

I like to advance my skills with each model, and the goal for this one is to try oil-based panel line detailing on an aircraft - I've done it on armor, but this has 10x the details with all those panel lines...and it is a Big Bird, stretching some 18 inches from the tail cone to the pitot probe in the radome.

Like all aircraft models, we start with the cockpit. The model's cockpit details are somewhat simple and generalized, not surprising as I suspect no prototype photos were available when this was in development. There were a few places I could enhance it, and some I simply had to improve.

First off, the kit HUD was simply a chunk. That had to go. I hit the spares box and pulled out some scale HUD frames for US aircraft I hadn't used, and chose one that was similar. It was dipped in chemical blackener, folded, and the projector lens (Simply a depression in the base) was painted green, then covered multiple times with drops of clear gloss until it had depth.

I had to fabricate the top glare shield out of sheet styrene, curved and glued in place. The front reflector was a piece of clear scrap cut to fit the frame.

There are some excellent cockpit detail sets out there, but the time and expense to acquire weren't on my plan for this kit. I'd make do with what the kit provided.

Painted the panel gray (not the unique Russian interior green, per the photos I had available), instruments were painted black, drybrushed in white to pick out the details, then the "lenses" were treated to drops of clear gloss. My main reference for prototype photos was

this book, published in 1992, after it had wowed the crowds with the Cobra maneuver and was allowed to be photographed in the West.

The ejection seat was rather spartan, so I added some seat belts made from wine bottle foil, again, based on photos from the Su-27 book.

They were painted gray and pushed out of the way so the pilot could enter unobstructed.

Once installed, the fuselage could be closed and the build begin in serious.

This is where I hit my biggest "fit" issues with this kit. I needed putty at the seam between the end of the fuselage fairing and the start of the radome at the nose, and the area directly below the vertical stabs at the rear. The rear especially took several sessions of putty-dry-sand-repeat.

"whole lotta putty goin' on..."

Next up, forward engine details and ducting. The first stage compressor blades were painted black, then highlighted with Chrome Silver enamel to make the "pop", as they'd be a few inches away from the closest viewing,

and hidden behind some nice photoetched FOD screens, which I chose to have in the Down position.

I spent some time agonizing over the color of the intake ducting. My reference photo,

seemed to show a greenish, perhaps anodized finish.

Many different variants are "correct", but I attempted to match my reference, mixing colors and spraying thinly over silver to achieve an approximation of the look I wanted.

Rear ducting underwent a similar prep, but I used some old Modelmaster metalizer to color the exhaust outside and aft of the afterburner.

Next, I'd deal with the other major issue I had with the kit - The Canopy. Molded in two parts, the large clear pieces fit well, but had a major flaw - a mold parting line straight down the middle of both pieces.

I couldn't leave that alone. But once started, there's no turning back.

File off the ridge.

Remove file marks with wet 320 grit

Remove 320 marks with wet 400 grit

Remove 300 marks with wet 600 grit

Remove 600 marks with bare metal foil plastic polish. Not good enough. Repeat. Several times

That'll do. With the canopy on, we can finish the empennage and other major exterior bits without issue.

I'm leaving off the gear and gear doors, and all instrument probes until last, to save on handling and other breakage risks, and avoid complicated masking (ha ha. See below).

The gear wells get a basic gray finish. The engines are sprayed with the buffing metalizer enamel mentioned above, and then sealed with the recommended sealer.

The sealer helps keep the mask that would follow from pulling up the metalizer, in which it was successful.

----TRUE CONFESSION----

My paint job is wrong. I had bought a set of Xtracolor paints specifically for this model back when I bought the kit. I chose...poorly. They don't match the paint specs of the kit, or the prototype, in the way I applied them. I admit that freely. But once I noticed, I wasn't doing it over :-(

But I digress...

The size and shape of this bird would require lots of masking. I wanted a fairly sharp demarcation between colors, as I saw in prototype photos, not a feathered edge. No worries, I'd used Silly Putty before for curved masking. But on a plane this size, I couldn't JUST use silly putty. I ended up using parafilm for most of the surface areas; Tamiya tape on the engines and canopy, and silly putty on the edges of the colors. The overall light blue was easy...

I propped it up on my turntable, sprayed...and knocked it down while cleaning up, breaking off an elevator, wing tip hardpoint, and elevator actuator.

Ah well.

Repaired, and masked, it's time for blue-gray, which was darker than I had calculated.

Color 3 was a medium blue, so more masking...

Striking, just not accurate :-(

Having calculated earlier that the radome needed about an ounce+ of weight, the gear went on without issue. The nose gear in particular was elaborate, like the prototype.

I keep the kit nose supported most of the time, as there's a fair amount of weight over a very slender strut, and no way to fix it but drill and pin if I screw up. Gear doors get sprayed red inside and installed.

Various probes are mounted and painted Aluminum. Radome painted white, ECM panels in the tail painted dark green, gun and surrounding panels painted dark bare metal (More, more, more masking lol).

Once all is dry, time for decals. I chose not to use the sharkmouth motif provided with the kit, and go with a more generic Frontal Aviation look (simply omitted some decals).

Next up, under-wing stores...

Each had to be assembled, then the tailcones drilled out and tapered to a. provide a rocket nozzle and b. give me a way to get them painted, by sticking them on a jig...

...and spraying them white. It required two coats to get decent coverage.

Some Jet Exhaust enamel on the rocket nozzles.

Two missiles featured clear IR seeker head noses, which I handled by painting the missile end dark silver; paiting the center chrome silver, and once dry, securing the clear hemispherical lens to the missile with a drop of clear gloss enamel.

An assortment of A2A were attached to the launch rails with some gap-filling ACC.

She looks good, now waiting for a clear matt finish, and the panel line detailing.

To Be Continued...
Well, life got busy in the final week of the group build, so I didn't set aside the time to do the panel line/light weathering I had planned. Here are a set of glamor shots, 5 of which I posted to the group event page. For a change of pace, I photographed them on a large mirror with a white foamcore background, outdoors. The overcast condition in the morning led to some unusual lighting and colors. Here's a look: