MPM 1/72nd Sukhoi Su-9 By Piotr Dmitruk

History

P.Sukhoi's construction bureau started to work on the design of the twin-engined fighter with RD-10 (Jumo-004) engines already in 1944. The work speeded up at the end of 1945. First flight took place in November 1946 with G. Sheyanov at the controls. After the first stage of the trials, vertical stabilizer was enlarged. Later A. Kotchetkov presented this aircraft at the parade in Tushino. There was made 136 flights, total 58 h 58min. Aircraft was in working order, but was cancelled due to lack of financing. There were built improved versions: Su-11, and Su-13, but they were cancelled too, because of poor performance, insufficient in 1948.

The Kit

It is my resin copy of early MPM's vacuform, which is not available now (the other model is Ukrainian Prop & Jet vacuform). Main vacuformed parts are very well done. Model fits goods in plans (only 3 mm shorter in span, and slightly too wide placed engines). It has very good, delicate panel lines. Wrong designed are the roots of the tail-plane. It's easy to fix, but one must be warned. Unfortunately, small injected parts are very poor, need quite a lot of improvement, or are completely useless. Cockpit canopy is vacuformed, not exactly translucent, and decals are again poor.

Construction

I didn't want to break this model, so I made resin copy. It's easy, one just needs to make cardboard walls over vacu plate, and fill it with rtv rubber. After vulcanizing and separating, fill the rubber mold with resin. By the way I made copies of some injected parts. In contrary to vacuform, model parts are already separated, there's no need to cut them from vacu plate. But one needs to hollow the fuselage to make cockpit, front wheel well, and prevent from tail-sitting. There were no engine intakes and exhausts, so I have used resin parts from CMK, meant for Me-262.

Injected cockpit was not so bad, but needed improving. I vacuformed new cockpit canopy, added new resin gunsight, control stick, bulletproof glass from transparent styrene, photoetched seatbelts, and several odds and ends like armoured plate, various handles and levers. Undercarriage legs were copied from kit's parts and improved, wheel well covers made from thin metal strip, and wheels were from Intruder and Corsair models, hardly converted. RATOG and bomb was also copied from kit and completed. Gun barrels were made from hypodermic needles, and aerial wires from fishing line.

Painting

All model was painted with an paintbrush, using Tamiya Flat Silver, Revell Steel and various shades of Testors Metallizer, without polishing, due to aircrafts dull surface. In some places (e.g. on the fin) it could look like poorly painted, but on the real aircraft those places were repaired, and had visibly rough surface.

Decals were from my scrap yard, and there was certain problem. I needed stars without white border, as it was in duralumin color. I had no other choice, but to cut this border out. According to photos, there was almost no need to weather, and I only used chalk pastels, wiped off with wet cloth.

Conclusions

It's hard to recommend kit, which is currently unavailable, but when You made Me-262 and Nakajima Kikka, it's worth trying to build another aircraft from this "family". I was lucky to have this opportunity.

Reference

I used Russian book "First Sukhoi Jet Fighters" from N. Gordyukov.