Oh yes, some months ago we had a great building report about this bird from George Johnson (@georgelj). It won the iModeler Model of The Month award and very few judging sessions I remember when the result was that undisputed.

I hesitated to start this post as I felt that everything worth telling about this kit and build was told before, but then I thought the heck with it!

I hope you enjoy this one more time nonetheless. It starts with some reference pictures courtesy of scalemodels.ru. Believe me, having those available is essential when building this kit.

6 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Let's get on with it.

You may have heard me and others saying this before, but anyway: pre-printed cockpit photo-etch just doesn't work as one can neither get the colours right nor the sheen of the surface. To me this always looks kind of strange and in the case of Eduard's Interior Set for the Su-33, even worth, it looks lavender.

In the picture below you see the instrument panel painted with Mr. Paint's excellent depiction the Sukhoi Works" cockpit colour, the side panels still being from Barbie's car.

I consequently went for the kit's well moulded plastic parts here, however, as it doesn't contain any solution for the instruments, I had to use Eduard's offering. Trying to over paint it with the brush didn't lead me anywhere, but:

after two or three times messing up the brush paint job, I realised that cleaning the thing with Revell Paint Remover doesn't resolve the pre print. In order to save the beautifully printed black instrument frames from being over-sprayed I used Tamyia Cotton Buds and the above said Revell product to clean up only the areas of the pre print I wanted to keep.

I really like this discovery.

The rest of the build of the cockpit went straight forward, though I have to say that gluing on the glazing with the frame painted in cockpit blue before, was quite a challenge.

7 attached images. Click to enlarge.

I can't wait to see this beauty roll off the production line!

That's pretty cool. Your build is looking spectacular as usual. In my research, I found that only the landing gear doors are painted red with the bays painted a darkish greenish grey. I'll see if I can find photos.

Building the airframe of this kit created lots of positive feelings. The surface quality is top-notch and the fit is not bad either. Let me point out the highlights:

• the typical edge at the front part of the airframe where the wings grow from the fuselage, needs some filling and sanding. I was concerned that it might require major efforts to get the cross section shapes aligned nicely but in fact it was no problem.

• Some more sanding was required at the rear part where upper and lower fuselage half meet. Attaching the tail rudders and fins imposed some homework to make the gaps look nice.

• I couldn't resist to buy Master Model's static dischargers. They are tiny but look great. Let's see whether I can make them survive the construction phase - I have my doubts.

• I'm not a big fan of major gluing operations at painted models so I tried to prepare the installation of pitot tubes and slats as widely as possible. Some styrene rod was added to the pitot tubes along with an according port hole at the airframe. Accordingly, the installation of the slats was assisted with brass tubes and hopefully some glue there will later do the job to attach them to the wings.

12 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Looking fantastic!

Doing the three-tone camouflage of the the Su-33 with its hard edges is an epic project. It's quite fun, but efforts are high and the progress is slow. I was in need of a moment of success tonight and so I went for the nozzles.

3 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Did you apply transparent blue on nozzles?