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Trumpeter 1/48 Sukhoi Su-24M Fencer-D

By Chris Banyai-Riepl

Overview

The Sukhoi Su-24 design dates back to the early 1960s, when Sukhoi began development of an all-weather version of their Su-7 aircraft. By the late 1960s, this design had evolved to incorporate a variable geometry wing, and the resultant T-6 prototype took to the skies at the end of 1971. Due to the complexity of the aircraft, both in flight systems and weapon systems, the Su-24 did not enter service until early 1975.  Even then, the aircraft underwent many production changes over the next few years.  All of these changes and upgrades were combined into the Su-24M variant, which entered service in 1983.  An export version of the Su-24M, the Su-24MK, flew in 1987, and both types are still in service with Russia and other air forces around the world.

The Kit

While the Su-24 has been the subject of a few 1/72 kits, this is the first time the big Sukhoi swing-wing has been done in injection plastic in 1/48. Prior to this release, the only real option available was the Collect-Aire resin kit. Now Trumpeter has provided the modeler with a more viable alternative. On first glance, this model is impressive, containing enough weaponry to outfit several Fencers. The parts are molded in the typical Trumpeter gray plastic, with vinyl tires and white metal landing gear pieces. The two decal sheets cover two aircraft options and all the copious stenciling found on the various weapons.

The overall parts breakdown suggests that we will see other variants of the Su-24 from Trumpeter before too long. The fuselage is split into a main rear fuselage section, a separate nose section, and separate radome and rear engine section. The central fuselage core is the same across all the Su-24 variants, and by changing the forward fuselage piece, you could get to the earlier Fencer-C variant. Change the vertical fin and the rear engine section, and you'd have the Fencer-A. An updated nose section with the various antenna panels will turn this kit in to a Fencer-E or Fencer-F. In fact, the kit includes the bulged heat exchanger intake for the Su-24MR Fencer-E and some of the antenna bulges for the Su-24MP Fencer-F. The kit out of the box represents an early Su-24M, with some details included for the Su-24M2. It could also be built as the export Su-24MK, and with a bit of extra work could work for any Su-24M/M2 variant. More on that extra work later, but now let's take a look at what's in the box.

Starting with the cockpit, this is very well done, with a pair of highly detailed ejection seats taking up the primary spot. In fact, I would say that these are probably the best K-36DM seats out there in injection plastic. Each seat is made up of no less than eleven pieces, and capture the look of the K-36DM quite well. For those so inclined, though, there are several aftermarket resin seats that could work as well. The cockpit tub itself is nicely detailed, with raised surface detailing for the side and center consoles. A separate piece provides the divider between the two seats, and separate control sticks add to the busy look of the cockpit. The instrument panel is clear, with separate decals provided for the instrument faces.

The completed tub sits on top of a five-piece nose wheel well. The multiple piece well allows for quite a bit of detail to be molded on the individual sides, and the well will look suitably busy when complete. Of course, not many will notice the well given how nicely done the nose gear is. This is really a great piece of work for Trumpeter, for not only does the kit include both injection and white metal nose gear legs, the kit includes two options in white metal. Yes, you get the option of having your nose gear compressed or extended. I haven't checked this too closely, but I would guess that if you load out your Fencer with a full complement of weaponry and fuel tanks, that nose gear strut is going to be compressed.

The completed cockpit/nose wheel well assembly is sandwiched between the two nose halves. Trumpeter has ribbed these pieces, as well as the main fuselage pieces, to provide some stiffening of the pieces. This is very welcome, as the large flat surfaces on this fuselage would be prone to warping and twisting, and could prove challenging to assemble. This internal stiffening helps greatly to counteract that. Also in the nose assembly is the air refueling probe, which the instructions show as retracted but could just as easily be glued in place extended. In front of that piece goes the radar assembly, which is fairly complete. The separate nose cone allows this to be displayed.

Moving to the rear of the aircraft, the afterburner section is complex and detailed, but unfortunately suffers from a rather major problem. First, the detailing. The kit includes two options for the burner can, fully open or fully closed. The hot section is also included, sitting at the bottom of about a 1" tube. The burner interior pieces are then surrounded by a separate piece, resulting in a very nice looking burner section. It's hard to find good photos of the interior of these burners, but it would appear that the inner section is a light color, while the outer is typical burnt metal in appearance. The instructions make no note of that, but that two-tone appearance will greatly improve the realism of your Fencer exhausts.

Now for the major problem. While these exhausts are nicely detailed, they are too far apart. This is a tough area to see in photographs, and drawings vary greatly on the Su-24, but it appears that Trumpeter has the right diameter of the exhausts, and the problem resides in the rear fuselage piece. There is a sharp taper when viewed from the top of the real aircraft, while the Trumpeter piece is much more gradual. This puts the exhausts quite a bit apart, when in fact they should be very close together. It also puts the two probes under the exhausts too far apart as well. As it appears that this error is constrained to just that single rear fuselage piece, perhaps we will see an aftermarket correction for this before too long. For those that don't want to wait for that, it would be a tough fix, but one could chop up the kit piece and bring the exhausts closer together by shimming the edges of the exhausts on the bulkhead they're attached to. Another possibility is to put exhaust covers on them, and just make them slightly oval, to give the perception that they are closer together than they really are.

Moving on to the wings, Trumpeter has provided an impressive center wing box arrangement that includes both a wing fold mechanism and a solid spar for the glove fairing. This assembly mounts atop a very large and detailed main gear well. The wing fold mechanism consists of a pair of large gears that should maintain alignment throughout the whole wing movement. There is a catch, though, which will become apparent when you look at the outer wing sections.

The outer wing sections have some beautiful details to them. There are separate clear wingtip lights (the Su-24 had colored bulbs, so don't tint these pieces), and nicely done slats and flaps. In fact, the latter are built up from two separate pieces, accurately capturing that split flap shape. The spoilers are also separate, although those are generally only up during flight. The wings have large teeth that will mesh nicely with the gears. So, after visualizing these pieces, do you see the problem with the wing fold mechanism? Yep, with the flaps down, this wing can't swing. All that beautiful engineering of the wing flaps becomes irrelevant should you wish to have the wings moveable. Still, I suppose it is nice that Trumpeter included that, for those that wish to have the flaps up and be able to move the wings in and out. Another nice tough along those lines is the vinyl insert for the fuselage side, for the slot cover for the wings. That's pretty much like how the real thing is, so kudos to Trumpeter for replicating that.

With all of these subassemblies done, the final assembly is fairly straightforward. Given the complexity of assembly of the fuselage, I would

highly recommend many repeated test fittings to make sure that everything is lined up right. A quick test fit shows that the actual attachment points are pretty positive, though, so really the only challenge here will be to minimize the amount of filler needed. I noticed that the nose cone is a touch oversized in plan view, so be ready for a bit of sanding there. It looks fine in profile, though. The nose-fuselage attachment point is quite sturdy, and this will only need a bit of work to minimize or eliminate the need for filler. The same goes for the rear engine piece. Overall, I have been very impressed with the dry fit of the parts, so this model should go together fairly easily.

Before jumping into the weaponry and marking notes, there are a couple other minor issues to cover. First up, on the vertical fin, the leading edge has a slight extension for much of its height. This kit has that extension ending too low down, though, and it should extend up just a bit more. This is a simple fix, though, just add a bit of plastic card at the top and sand to shape.

The other issue involves the wing pylon and fence on the fixed wing section. This is a big identifier on early Fencers, and this kit provides a very nice rendition of that large rounded wing fence. However, the kit also includes the rear fuselage chaff dispensers, and shows both of these as applied to the aircraft. This is incorrect. The Su-24M went through several iterations of wing fence/chaff dispenser arrangements. The original Su-24M had the rounded wing fence and no chaff dispensers. This was then changed to a squared wing fence that had chaff dispensers built into the top. This was the most common setup found on Su-24MK aircraft. On later Su-24M and MK aircraft, the wing fence was done away with. The rear fuselage chaff dispensers were added later, and are generally found only on Su-24M2 aircraft.

As the kit has the wing fence set integrally with the pylon, the only option out of the box is an early Su-24M. Should you wish to build a later Su-24M, or an Su-24M2, you will need to modify the pylon. What is interesting is that the boxtop artwork shows the correct later-style pylon. For those who want to do an Su-24MK, you will have to rework the wing fence into the squared off type, with the chaff dispenser. Either of these would actually be pretty simple to do, with the former requiring some careful cutting and filing, and the latter some plastic card work.

For the weaponry, this kit is very thorough. In addition to the PTB-3000 fuel tanks (pay attention to the painting instructions on these; those forward fins are set at an angle to facilitate separation), this kit comes with just about everything the Fencer can carry. This includes three options of the S-25 (straight S-25, S-25L, and S-25FM), KAB-500KP, KAB-1000KP, B-13L, KAB-500L, Kh-29L, Kh-29T, Kh-25ML, KMGU-2, Kh-25MP, Kh-31P, Kh-58, R-60MK, S-24B, ZB-500, B-8M1, FAB-500, AB-100, AB-250, and Kh-59. Check your references for proper loadout, though, as I believe the ZB-500 and the R-60MKs are not carried by Su-24M Fencers, but are carried by the Su-24MP.

Now on to the decals. As noted, one sheet contains the stenciling for the above list of weaponry. Just building and decaling all of those weapons will keep you busy for a month. For the kit itself, there are two decal options: one in the classic gray and white scheme and one in the two-tone brown camouflage over light blue. In both cases you cannot build these aircraft out of the box, as neither of them had the large wing fences. So be ready to do a bit of work there. For the camouflaged option, the decals are pretty good, being Blue 91. There is not much else on this aircraft, and for some interesting additional color, many of the photos I have of this aircraft show it loaded out with AB-100 bombs on the wing pylons.

For the gray/white option, this is Red 42 from 968 IISAP, 4 TsBP PLS (968th Instructional & Test Composite Regiment, 4th Combat & Conversion Training Center) based at Lipetsk. The aircraft of this unit has an emblem on the fuselage ahead of the intake, which the decal sheet captures quite well. It also has the Sukhoi emblem, but this only appears on the left nose, not on the right. Just leave the second one off and you're good there. What is missing, though are the string of red stars above the 'Always' emblem on the left side. There should be two rows of five and one row of four. Interestingly, these stars are shown on the boxtop artwork (albeit wrong in count, and on the wrong side).

The decals themselves appear to be well printed, and the sheet includes a thorough representation of the stenciling found on the Su-24. There should be no problems in application.

Conclusion

Overall, I think Trumpeter did a pretty good job of capturing the look of the Su-24 in this kit. While it does have some issues, overall there will be no mistaking this for anything but a Fencer when it is built up. A quick Google image search reveals quite a few interesting camouflaged examples from around the world, as well as some interesting Russian options, so I am sure it will not be too long before we see some nice aftermarket decal sheets as well. My thanks to Stevens International for the review sample.