Build Log | Mistercraft Su-17M3 Afghan war
Engraved panel lines on a sub 10 euro kit, not too bad!
The nosecone is a bit dimpled and not sharp enough at all..
And also there are some mold imperfections elsewhere. Well, you get what you pay for.
Fixed the nosecone with some sprue goo and plenty of sanding.
The cockpit was bare and boring, didn't fit and sat too deep in the hull. Sanding, cutting and filing was required to make the cockpit fit, and I shimmed the height of the tub to make the seat stick out enough. I started building some scratch improvements. Nothing too crazy but just some visual interest.
Cut a custom instrument panel and made some fantasy side panels and a throttle. The kit does not come with any decals for it.
Testing fitment in the cockpit
Sprayed in a close enough vallejo AF blue and painted the seat black.
And done.
There was a mold imperfection for the ventral fin and it was way too thick to begin with, so I cut it off and sculped a close-enough substitute out of plastic sheet.
Glued to the body.
Wings attached. I don't seem to have good pictures of the wings assembly but it was relatively straightforward. I struggled a bit to determine the correct dihedral for the wings but they seem to angle down just a slight bit. The wings are alright but the fences are really thick which seems to be a common complaint with this mold.
The spine is one of the biggest challenges on this kit. It doesn't fit well and notably sticks out from the tailplane.
A lot of sprue goo, even more sanding and a small bit of Mr. White Putty R later, I am quite happy with the way the spine blends in with the rest of the plane. However, a lot of surface detail is gone and has to be re-scribed.
Spine glued and initial filling done.
The initial plan for this plane was to have the cockpit closed, since the canopy is one-piece. However, the plastic is terrible and I don't have polish on hand, so I decided to cut it open.
With some micro saws I carefully cut along the line of the cockpit frame. Strictly speaking, the frame should be cut exactly in half, but I didn't trust myself to not have the saw slip, or somehow not saw straight and completely ruin the piece.
Here is a picture of the cockpit so far. Certainly not accurate, but convincing enough. I can't find out whether or not the TV monitor is supposed to be in there, but I thought it looked neat and just rolled with it.
I am saving the pitot tubes inside an empty #11 blade container until it is time to use them. The Su-17 family of aircraft sure has a cool pitot, and this mold while a bit thick does it decent justice, I think.
The gear bay doors are completely bare on the inside so I decided to imitate the real thing a bit and add a little bit of surface detail as scribing practice.
I got a bit carried away and started adding rivets, which I made with my hand drill.
I'm not unhappy with the result, although it is of course a little rough. Fortunately that means it blends well with the rest of the kit.
I replicated the effort on both doors.
The effect when installed is quite nice.
Installed the wheels in order to see whether I weighed the nose down enough. It seems to not be tail-heavy, so that's good!
The antennae on the body were inaccurate and super thick, so I recreated them out of some plastic using some pictures as refrence. I can't figure out well which is which, so I just rolled with something. This is not measured, just eyeballed a bit.
The inner wing pylons are not keyed for left and right and need to be menually filed down to fit. I had to also file down the wings a bit in order to ensure a correct fit. It's not too visible, so it's okay
The midwing pylons were completely missing, so I had to scratchbuild them. 0.75mm plasticard was used.
Roughly sketched the outline
lots and lots of filing later, i'm not unhappy with this result
Putty'd the sides up a bit with Mr. White Putty. Will sand it down later.
Working on the other side with the left wing side as a base.
And done. The sizing is slighly different for now, but I'm planning to go back and sand them to size.
The overall effect is quite alright and more or less looks like the other pylons.
I think they sit slightly high on the wing, maybe I can do something about it later, but not too concerned.
The nosecone needed quite a bit of putty to get flush
There was a big molding flaw on the parachute launcher, so putty was applied to fill the gap.
Closer up, with more putty applied
Cockpit glued down with some PVA glue and masked. Will open it again at a later point but I understand this is the preferred way for painting.
Masking aftermath
Finally the belly pylons are on. I had some trouble with the fit as it didn't quite look accurate, so I had to sand the pylons down a bit.
Primer applied, Colour scheme has been settled on and the camouflage mapped out on the kit with some pencil. In true Mistercraft style the paint instructions were wrong. Sigh
First time I do this kind of preshading. I had a lot of splatter, it turns out the paint didn't mix too well in the cup. Oh well, will get some mixing cups
Paint going on decently
The result of a night of painting. I'm pretty happy with it so far.
Most of the camo painted... next is some cleanup and then the underside.
Painted the exhaust with a mix of Vallejo Model Air Silver and Mecha Black Wash.
And the metallic underside
Blue going on the underside
More or less done... now there is some cleaning up to do. slight overspray in a few areas, and need to touch up the borders.
All masked up for painting the dielectric panels. Done with Citadel Warpstone Green, that I didn't mix well, so I had some nasty cleanup to do afterward.
I touched up the underside. Now it looks real nice.
Other side... although the starboard side is my favourite.
Wheels painted, by hand
Pylons were painted blue by hand. The blue is a little bit too blue for my taste! I would have preferred something a bit less saturated. Oh well!
After an absolute massive amount of masking, I got the metallic panels on the wing painted. I'm very paranoid about metallics overspray. Normally, it's not a huge deal as long as it's not too much, but those glitters stand out like a sore thumb.
The pitots were finally primed, glued and painted.
I also painted these whatsits on the stabilators.
Finally, these fantasy-rich doodats bits were glued on as well as the main landing gear arms. Will be hand-primed and painted as soon as the glue is ready.
Progress so far... I'm a bit split on the colours. I hope an all-over wash can unify everything.
Started putting on decals. They're not too bad, and opposed to the other Mistercraft kit I built, they seem to be the right size.
Sprayed a clear coat to prepare for decals and washing. Tamiya x-22a with Mr. Hobby MLT. as you can see I am not good at it and I would welcome tips.
Suddenly disaster! The top coat started bubbling from the Tamiya Mark Fit I was using. Maybe it's not dry enough yet, or maybe Mark Fit is a bit hotter than I am used to. I was sweating a little!
Luckily, the problem subsided quite soon after giving it a little time to dry. Phew!
I LOVE Microsol! Look how nice those decals layed down in the panel lines. Mmmmm
Bottom side decals.
This is going to be a challenge, as I've never folded a decal around raised detail like this!
Okay, got it on...
Softening well..
Well that's not too bad at all, for a first timer.
Definitely looks a lot more legit with the decals on!
started with panel lining on the bottom. Just a gray colour.
On top I use Tamiya Dark Brown.
I'm not good at cleaning up the panel lines yet. The large amount of raised details doesn't make it easier on this kit.
I also glued the main wheels on with some PVA glue.
I tinted the first stage of the exhaust with some Tamiya Brown panel liner to match the colour. this was tedious, next time I'd much rather just get the colour right out of the gate.
I'm fond of the tail. Almost done now...
Started some streaking and weathering on the belly.
Comments
42 20 July 2023, 13:06
Maciej BellosYou are a brave man. I was thinking of buying it. The thought went away after the 51 pics of the album!!!
29 July 2023, 13:33
aetiosMaciej, I would 'recommend' this kit inasfar as that it looks quite nice when done, is cheap and great practice.
Alex, yes, I did use vallejo colours, I will put a list of colours used in the album once I finish the build, though I'm not sure if they match exactly. Good reference pictures of the plane I am building are hard to find!
29 July 2023, 17:54
Maciej BellosI know what you mean aetios, but I have quite a few for practice, for example a Zvezda MiG-23, 2 old mould Italeri F-16s, a MiG-25PU, so in this case I will pass.
Looking forward to the end result!
29 July 2023, 18:35
AlexThanks, I just bought my first vallejos, so I try to get as many inputs as I can! 🙂
29 July 2023, 18:53
aetiosWell, painting is finally getting to a close! Finding good references for this plane really proved to be nasty difficult. It seems those soviets just did whatever they felt like with their planes!
There is one glaring thing missing from this kit and that is the cannon blast shields. I don't have the right thickness plasticard right now to scratch build it... I'm considering delaying finishing this kit until after my vacation for it, so it is just that little bit more accurate.
30 July 2023, 19:58
aetiosRobert, thats a decent idea worth a try, I will give it a go dry-fitted tonight.
31 July 2023, 08:58
aetiosI decided to not do any more modeling on this kit and push on to finishing. It's no use polishing a turd too long, especially when I already learned so much here.
15 August 2023, 20:29
Живко ДжаковWhat you have made of this kit is unique. I'm a big pessimist about this brand, but you show that they have potential.
16 August 2023, 06:25
aetiosI added the decals and I have to say, I'm not unhappy with them! My experience with a previous Mr Craft kit was that the decals were pretty bad but these were, well, okay!
16 August 2023, 21:49
aetiosThinking of adding some generic warning decals but also kind of want to push on and not superdetail this kit for no good reason. maybe I'll put some on the drop tanks.
17 August 2023, 06:59
aetiosdecals have now been sealed in. I have a feeling I'm slowly getting better with thinning x22 varnish. Some of the coats looked rather nice.
now I have to wait. I don't think 8 hours drying time is quite enough to hit it with panel liners...
17 August 2023, 12:35
aetiosEnded up not waiting... luckily it didn't bite me too hard 😅😅 panel lining is fun!
18 August 2023, 05:17
Album info
I picked up a su-17 m3 kit for sub-10 euro, I wanted to try a swing wing kit to practice painting and other new techniques and this seems to be a fun project. Hope you have fun following along.
