1/48 SU-30SM Flanker H in process

Had about half an hour to start the kit, the seats had a nice amount of detail and went together nicely. I should hopefully be able to paint the seats and construct the cockpit tomorrow.   

Had about half an hour to start the kit, the seats had a nice amount of detail and went together nicely. I should hopefully be able to paint the seats and construct the cockpit tomorrow.  

Managed to finish the seats and start the rest of the cockpit. The PE that came in the kit was nice but I messed it up a bit by placing them in the wrong place. Luckily it turned out OK and I am pleased with it. Hopefully tomorrow I should be able to finish the cockpit and start the engine.  

Managed to finish the seats and start the rest of the cockpit. The PE that came in the kit was nice but I messed it up a bit by placing them in the wrong place. Luckily it turned out OK and I am pleased with it. Hopefully tomorrow I should be able to finish the cockpit and start the engine.  

Had enough time tonight to finish the cockpit and engines, decided to use the decals provided for the instrument panels as they where well detailed. The decals conformed nicely to all the gauges and screens without a problem.  

Test fit of the seats, I will leave the out until near completion.  

Didn't spend too long on the engines as they will be hidden away in the fuselage. They had nice detail, especially the fan and interior of the afterburner area (I have no idea what it is called). Tomorrow I should hopefully be able to fit everything into the fuselage and start assembling the air intakes.  

Everything is now in the fuselage, it was a squeeze to fit everything and there are still a few gaps that I will fill later on. I put some weights behind the cockpit just in case it ends up tail heavy. I should be able to start the air intakes later.  

The air intakes had nice detail and fit but unfortunately had ejector pin marks which had to be filled and sanded. I also had to cut away some of the area where the intake connects to the engine as it was leaving a large gap. There is still a small gap on both intakes but should be easy to fill. Tomorrow, I should be able to start the landing gear.  

Landing gear have been assembled and had the main colour applied. They were well detailed and Fairly easy to assemble, Kitty Hawk has also fixed the main landing gear axels which had been missing in the previous kits. Tomorrow, I should be able to finish the landing gear and start on the wings.  

Landing gear are now finished. I also started the wheels which had nice detail, I still need to apply a wash to make these details stand out.  

I also had time today to attach the wings and resin exhausts that were supplied with the kit. The wings had a good fit and had no gaps were it joined fuselage. The resin exhausts had a large gap which required a lot of filling and sanding. I also filled in some gaps around the air brake and near the nose. Tomorrow I should hopefully finish filling all the gaps and attach all the small parts.  

All the gaps have now been filled, the main ones being near the air intake and between the resin nozzles and fuselage. I have now apllied primer and will hopefully start the metal areas around the engines. I haven't got much experience using metal paints but it should turn out ok.  

I have now painted the metallic engine areas. I think it turned out ok, I had to mix a few paints to make some of the colours which worked fairly well. I will improve the look of these areas with oil paint later on. I will probably start the camouflage on the underside in the next few days.  

I have now painted the camouflage on the underside of the su-30. It took a while to get the pattern close to the real thing but I think it turned out great. I had to use the painting guide from the 1/72 zvezda kit as the kitty hawk guide only showed the underside as being one solid colour. I should hopefully paint the eggplant grey tonight or in the couple of days.  

The eggplant has now been applied, I also had time to do the metallic areas near the cannon and on the horizontal stabiliser. I also applied the white on the nose cone and on the vertical stabilizers. Fitting the landing gear was a bit difficult and had to be angled so the wheels where parallel to the body. The front landing let had an axel on one side that was too big for the wheel to fit on so I carefully increased the size of the hole on the wheel so it would fit. I should be starting the decals soon as I have applied the gloss varnish.  

I have now applied all the decals; it took longer than expected as they did not conform to the details that well and required a lot of micro sol to be applied. Some of the decals that were meant to be yellow were also very thin and transparent so when applied to the model they looked very dull and hard to see. The rest of the yellow decals appeared to be more of a mix of orange and yellow when on the actual plane, they appear to be just yellow. A bit of weathering should hopefully make these orange/yellow ones a bit darker. I should hopefully start weathering in the next few days. 

The SU-30 is now finished, I only used black and white oil paints for the weathering and I think the results turned out great. I also attached some of the smaller parts like lights and the small glass bit near the front. I will take better pictures tonight.