If you are one of those, that follow my blog and my projects, it should come as no surprise, that I have a soft spot for Flankers. Sukhoi’s big twin jet fighter first flew the same year that I was born and in its distinguished career proved its worth, forming the backbone of Soviet and later Russian Air Force, while the basic variant developed from a fighter/interceptor to power multirole versions (Su-30 series), fighter bomber (Su-34), naval fighter (Su-33) and its final guise, a modern 4++ generation, super maneuverable fighter, the Su-35S ‘Flanker-E’.
In my airshow ‘career’, I have witnessed displays of many fighters, all of the American ‘teen-series’, European 4th gen fighters, MiGs and even the famed F-22 Raptor. Yet when I’ve seen Su-35S for the first time, display what it’s capable of, it was like a cherry on top of the Flanker cake. Here’s a photo of the first Su-35S prototype I made at MAKS 2011.
So you can imagine my excitement, when I first heard that Hasegawa announced the release of this version in gentleman’s scale. A few months later, HLJ enabled the preorders, and the kit arrived early August. As you can expect from Hasegawa, the plastic is crisply moulded and full of detail.
As you can see the raised detail is very crisp. I was comparing the side consoles layout with the photos of the real thing and Hasegawa nailed it almost to a button! Hats off. However not everything’s perfect. Two big Multi Function Displays on the instrument panel should be rectangular, not square and there are side(wall) consoles missing. The latter is not such a big deal as with cockpit installed, you won’t see much inside anyway.
K-36 seat is nice. Not surprisingly harnesses are missing but as I will use a pilot, that doesn’t bother me at all. And if you wanna improve this section, there’s tons of aftermarket K36s out there.
Ejection seat finished. Nice touch are head rest placards decals. Ejection seat handle was made from 0.19mm copper wire as the supplied one is of wrong shape (inverted bell) and too thick. Also notice that painting diagram is wrong – instructions want you to paint whole seat black, while newer version of the seat use olive-green fabric instead of black leather.
There is an option to use decals for side consoles and instrument panels, but unfortunately they are mostly wrong, as all panels are painted black with white buttons, like on american fighters, while Flanker’s cockpit is a bit more colourful. I have used a few decals though, for the radio station and for all the MFD’s. One little detail I’ve added were new better shaped rudder pedals and the bare metal area before them. Won’t be visible in the end, but it’s there 😉
The ejection seat and instrument panel fit without problems.
Meat Boris! You actually get two pilot figures in the kit and they’re very nicely moulded as you can see. With positionable head and arms, there’s no problem positioning him to have his hands on HOTAS.
Mandatory coin comparison check!
And as I said before, while you install the pit, there’s not much left to be seen of those beautiful details.
Till the next time!
VVS modelling 