Sukhoi Su 32 Platypus

Kit pictures

And the real plane ...

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The kit is made-up of 115 light grey and 6 clear parts. Plastic surface is a bit rough and panel lines engraving is quite heavy. The kit was built almost straight from the box without modifications. Cockpit detailing is quite comprehensive, taking into account that little can be seen when it's closed. I added seat straps, ejection handles, throttle levers, MFD and a new acetate HUD. With little effort we've got a nice looking cockpit.  

Now to the fuselage. There's no need to weight the nose. Both fuselage halves match quite well. Some trimming is required at the rear end to match the extended tail empennage. Jet intakes should be thinned a bit to improve its scale appearance. I also added compressor vanes from and old F14 kit at the end of the intake trunking. Rear empennage tip must be trimmed to fit. It's cross section is bigger than the tail. Fuselage spars must be trimmed to fit the wing recesses. Wing to fuselage joint is perfect on top but not so good un the underside. Anyway it will be hidden when all the weapons are in place. Tail planes trailing edges must be thinned. Elevons must be trimmed to fit the fuselage. Tail planes locating lugs are too weak. I snapped them a couple of times during construction. I had to glue them with ciano in order to get a stronger joint. With a bit of trimming a touch of PVA glue the canopy fits quite well. Mask it are we're ready to paint the bird.

In this model I used gloss paint. Partly because of the plane Air Show pretty-finish and partly as an experiment to avoid a clear coat before decaling. But it didn't worked as good as expected. I didn't find much information about the Platypus colours. Ken Duffey's article on Scale Models suggests some mixes which are very close to the original but I didn't find the blue hue be right so I made my own mix.  You can check my mixes on the model file. The model was painted with my brand new Aztek 740 airbrush. It's wonderful, a bit expensive but a great and useful tool. I truly recommend it. For the overall colour (Light Blue) I used the acrylic nozzle (black) and for the camouflage I used the fine tip nozzle (cream). An overall light blue coat served as undercoat. After some little retouching I applied a second light blue coat which served as undersides colour. After all camouflage was finished I covered the model with a gloss coat in order to help decal setting. For that coat I used the wide tip nozzle (turquoise). Kit's decal's are quite good so I used all of them. I added some missing stencils, specially for the weaponry, from a Revell Mig 31 de Revell (a really ugly kit, by the way ...). I spoiled the 44 number from the decal sheet and I wasn't able to find a substitute, so ... Once the decals where dry a satin varnish upper coat was applied. I also applied a very subtle black wash on elevons, flaps and rudders.

And then to the undercarriage and the weapons... The former is really good and very detailed. As far as I know is the only Flanker kit that represents the link between the strut and the fuselage. Wheel wells are fair but look nicer with a bit of extra detailing  (boxes, pipes, etc...). The weapons from the kit are dummies, that's why it's red colour... Some parts need trimming, specially wings and the horrible sink marks.

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