Sukhoi Su-15TM 'Red 32; 54th IAP'

Erik Apunkt
Great project. 👍
You'll have a lot of fun in fitting the QB nose properly. 😉 It's substantially larger in diameter than the kit's fuselage. You may have to add some additional material to the lower part of the fuselage.

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Torben H.
Here you are! 🙂
Made a dry fit with the nose, looks good so far. Maybe QB retouched it. The front wheel well has to move to the front for about 8mm. I'll only adress the obvious glitches, cause it's my first try on Alclads. Too much filling and cutting won't help me here. 😉

Erik Apunkt
Apparently QB did rework the nose cone. I purchased one of the very first issues (cream coloured) and finally swapped it for a Loon radome, the latter snugging in quite neatly. I also replaced the kit's canopy with the clear parts from OEZ's Su-7 - more accurate as to shape and proportions.

Marc Schimmler
Have fun!!!!

Torben H.
Thanks Marc!
Eric, I have the Loon one here, too. But it didn't address the length problem, the QB one is a few mm shorter.
Great tip with the canopy, will check that. Can you explain your point on the extra material to the lower part of the fuselage? Oh, and a nice pic there!

Erik Apunkt
Inserting a small wedge-shaped plug of sheet styrene into the forward lower fuselage joint would have been a possible fix to cope with QB's first-issue nose cone. The upper fuselage joints would have been glued together "as is" in order to avoid any additional filling while installing the upper fuselage decking.

Erik Apunkt
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Just in case you didn't know...
The kit's wings are depicting a far too heavily pronounced wing anhedral.

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Torben H.
Thank you, Eric. Interestingly the kit fits perfectly to the drawings published in Yefim Gordons book "Sukhoi Interceptors". Gordon is known for his good contacts to the russian aviation industry, but the drawings in this publication are crap. I took some drawings from a russian website, and they match well to photographs.
In the end it will look like an Su-15. Hopefully...

Erik Apunkt
Agreed! The folks at Trumpeter are well-known for largely relying on available scale drawings during their R&D. We both know, as to scale drawings, the trick is to sort the wheat from the chaff. And so far, Trumpeter has had a real nack for selecting the chaff. We had an earlier conversation on this topic, so the two of us are pretty much familiar with such "issues". 😉

By the way...
While taking measurements from an actual MiG-23ML, we found out that the drawings I had selected turned out to be the most accurate in town, featurig an average deviation of 1,7%. The MiG-23 drawings were penned by Alexander Rusetsky, a Belarusian design draughtsman, back in 1993 and were first published in "MIG-23ML/P/MLD" by Sergey Bourdin (aeroPLAN publications, Minsk, 1994).

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Torben H.
Very tempting, Erik (with 'k', of course). I think we both have a soft spot for those cold war russian flying tanks. Hope to see some of your progress soon.

Norman Gruss
Okay, I'll take this seat in the first row...