May I present you the P-42 (former T-10-15 Su-27 demonstrator modified to set time to climb records) in 1/144 scale.

Base kit is Trumpeter, with some chopping done to align with the original airframe. Anything that was not essential to the very basic purpose of flight – including paint finish – was removed. Tips of vertical stabilizers, ventral fins, IR dome, tail sting – are all gone, so are most of antennas. In 1986-7 the P-42, equipped with uprated engines which along with other modifications gave thrust to weight ratio of ~2.0, set series of time-to-climb records, beating those set in 1975 by likewise lightened and stripped out F-15 Streak Eagle.

Trumpeter comes together nicely, some minimal sanding was required to smooth out joints, nothing to worry about. Was it not used as a prototype for Shelf Oddity PE fret it would be a really quick and effortless assembly. Painting process begun with even coat of AK Extreme Metal Aluminium, that revealed a lot of surface imperfections obviously. Having dealt with that I masked and sprayed the chromate base, keeping the coat thin, trasparent and uneven. That was end of the job for the airbrush, in came the pencil and a lot of noodling to replicate polished panel lines. Finally – tensocromes, thinly diluted valejo and color pencils contributed to overheated areas at the back of the airframe. Tow bar was scratch built, ladder is part of PE set, barriers will soon become another PE set 🙂

15 additional images. Click to enlarge.