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.