for me and, while many at the
Milton Keynes model club know
my views on re-scribing panel
lines (“Life’s too short”), even
I was moved to run a scalpel
over some of the finer lines.
There are two sprues of clear
parts, one being the large canopy,
very reminiscent of the F-111, and
the other being missile seeker
noses, HUDs, lights etc. There
are three metal parts for the
undercarriage, a small sheet of etch,
and two decal sheets. The larger
decal sheet is mostly weapon and
pylon markings, while the smaller
sheet holds the markings for the
two aircraft options provided.
There are two full-colour Painting
and Marking Guide sheets, one
for the ordnance and one for
the airframe. The instructions
consist of a typical twenty-page
booklet of line drawings, slightly
smaller than A4. They look clear
but we’ll see how they behave.Looking good so far. So where do
we start? Oh, the cockpit, how novel.CONSTRUCTION
The seats are an eleven-part
assembly and look pretty nice.
I was initially going to break
out some resin, but as you can’t
open the cockpit, I decided to use
them as is. If I’m being honest, I
don’t think Hobby Boss needed
to use quite as many parts as
there are to achieve the result
they have (we may come back to
that statement later), but I would
class them as good plastic seats.
The detail in the rest of the
cockpit area is a little lacking
(we’ll see how much is visible later
anyway), but the instrument panel
does look very nice. Hobby Boss
have provided a decal for the panel,
but they have chosen to depict
all the MFDs “live,” with bright
blue backgrounds, quite unlikeanything I can find pictures of.
Regardless of whether any of the
displays ever look like the decal,
how often would they all be “on”,
when there’s no crew in the cockpit?
Another question was, what
colour is the cockpit area? I
like to see a Soviet cockpit with
turquoise splashed everywhere, as
it makes a change from grey. But
your editor said that production
Su-34s have gone this way, and
there are definitely pictures of
Su-34 cockpits in grey. But there
are also some good pictures of it in
turquoise and green. What to do?
In the end, I delayed starting
the cockpit, as there was the
promise of some Eduard etch down
the line. But when it turned up,
I was still conflicted. The initial
pictures of the etch I had seen
online looked faintly blue-green,
but when the set arrived (Su-
Interior Set, 49 824) it had the
parts in light grey. In the end, I
thought, “who really knows?”, so
my cockpit is a mixture of Vallejo
071 Emerald, Xtracolor RAF Dark
Green, several shades of grey, and
whatever colour the Eduard etch is.
The Eduard set adds some much
needed detail to the canopy, and the
HUD is very nice, but the set itself
is a little strange. On one side of the
instruction sheet are the cockpit
details (which I would consider
“Su-34 Interior”), and on the other
side are, well, external bits: air data
stuff, static wicks, aerials, that sort
of thing. It would have been really
nice if, instead of that, they had
included the seatbelts, rather than
having them as another separate set(which I didn’t get). The large HUD
section in front of the pilot, which
I would assume has some controls
on it, doesn’t get anything either.
I was also supplied with
the Su-34 Exterior Set 48 921,
which includes wheel well and
afterburner details (which has some
complicated bending required!),
amongst other things. Moving on...
Next come the wheel bays. The
nose wheel bay has nice structural
detail, but it and the main gear bays
KIT DETAILS:
MANUFACTURER: HOBBY BOSS
PRODUCT NUMBER: 81756
SCALE: 1/
TYPE: INJECTION MOULDED
PANEL LINES: RECESSED
PARTS: ABOUT 890 (SERIOUSLY!), PLUS
A SMALL SHEET OF ETCH AND 3 WHITE
M E TAL PART S.“THE COMPLETED SU-34 FULLBACK IS
BIG, BEAUTIFUL, FITS TOGETHER WELL,
AND I HAD A LOT OF FUN BUILDING IT”
WWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • JANUARY 2018 • 7
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