of an aftermarket part turning up.
So on to stage 6, which joins the
upper and lower fuselage halves
(with the exhausts in place) and
fits the tail boom/stinger, which
means I have to mention the other
major problem: KittyHawk have
got this kit out pretty quickly and,
in the rush to be first, have been
caught out by subsequent changes
to the real aircraft. In the case of
the tail boom the kit supplies the
chaff/flare dispensers on the upper
surface, which is where they started
off. Apparently testing showed that
underneath was better, so most
Russian and ALL Chinese aircraft
have or will have these fairings
on the bottom of the boom.
The good news is that if you
plan to do the kit options Red 05 or
Black 902 the boom is right. The bad
news is that all the other options in
the kit would be wrong. (One more
reason to make Red 05 or Black
902 is that the kit doesn’t have the
bottle that you see on the inside of
Su-27 nose gear doors; in most cases
that bottle should be there but on
these two airframes they took it off.)
Stages 7 and 8 cover the wings,
which are four-part assemblies
(top, bottom, front, and rear flaps),
but at this stage I just joined the
top and bottoms. I’m not happy
about the underside join not being
on a panel line, but I chose not to
fill/sand/re-scribe/re-rivet the
details. Lazy, that’s me, just don’t
look at the underside of my kits.WWW.SAMPUBLICATIONS.COM • SEPTEMBER 2018 • 17
1/
014-21-FEAT-Flanker-0918.indd 17 16/08/2018 17: