Amodel 1/72nd Sukhoi Su-26 By Piotr Dmitruk

History

In 1982 in P.O.Sukhoi's construction bureau young engineers established a group for constructing sports planes. Following the technical requirements of Soviet aerobatic team, Su-26 was constructed. First flight took place June 30 1984, with E. Frolov at the controls. Just in a few days, in August 1984 this aircraft started in World Championship.
Aircraft was constructed of glass and carbon fibers, equipped with 268 kW 9-cylinder Vedeneyev radial engine. Sukhoy Su-26 became absolutely the best aerobatic airplane of its time and won many awards at world championships. It was succeeded on the production line by more advanced Su-26M incorporating new fin, propeller and canopy (the first five serial Su-26M had older canopy design). Today the new generation Su-29 and Su-31 replaced the Su-26M in production. It was manufactured over 50 examples of all versions.

The Kit

It's enough to see one AModel kit, and you know what to expect, when you open the box. Typical short-run with lots of flash, poorly moulded small parts, and very bad clear parts. But when you clean kits parts, you receive quite good model.

Construction

This aircraft has glass around all fuselage, so even in tiny model of it, you can see quite a lot of the interior. But in this kit clear parts are completely not clear, and need replacement. After cleaning and polishing, thanks to their thick walls, kit parts were used as molds for vacuforming of a new, clearer cockpit canopy, side and bottom windows. Then new glass was tinted from inside, using Tamiya Smoke paint. There were only 3 kit parts to equip interior with: dashboard, pilots seat, and a bar supporting this seat. I built all internal tubular structure using Plastruct rods and injection needles, replaced dashboard, and added stick, pedals and some minor parts. After glueing two halves of the fuselage together, bottom and side widows were glued and blended in to the body. Further construction was straightforward, only needing cleaning and trimming parts. Aerodynamical aileron balances on bottom side of the wing, and fuselage antenna need to be scratchbuilt. It was difficult to replicate engine cooling gills. There were only flat places on the model, and need to be shaped.

Painting

Model was painted using Tamiya and Humbrol paints. Decals were very well printed and went well. Only minor problem was on tail and rudder, when decal was too short. Since it's color was the same, as the color of the upper fuselage, it was easy to mask this gap.

Conclusions

If you are not afraid of doing some surgery, and cleaning, I can surely recommend this kit. It's not for beginners, but if you put in some work, you can obtain pretty little gem.

Reference