November 2017
Sukhoi Su-
Page, model images & text © 2017 www.gengriz.co.uk
Have a look at my Adversaries pages for more Soviet model builds
During the Cold War, it was often difficult to obtain accurate details (and thus kits) of Warsaw Pact aircraft and equipment. Czech company KP were one of the few reliable sources, and although their kits were often rather roughly moulded and difficult to build with barely usable decals, they quickly gained a reputation for accuracy. KP’s main business was moulding kitchen utensils, and as the Iron Curtain began to drop they quickly upped their game to become one of the first of the new wave of eastern european kits that set such high standards in the late 1990s.
This particular kit is a late 1980s issue, (the instructions suggest 1987) and kind
of straddles this period -
The Su-
Like many high-
The BKL version depicted by this kit employed a unique skid arrangement alongside
its main wheels to assist with operation on soft unprepared runways or in snow,
along with a larger nose wheel and twin braking parachutes. Rocket JATO pods were
then utilised to assist with subsequent take-
The kit was a reasonable build, but joints and edges needed a lot of cleaning up
and the plastic responded a little slowly to my normal solvent-
The decals (a generic set of Soviet, Czech and Polish markings and numbers) were probably usable, but had yellowed badly and needed cutting individually from the sheet, so I used a spare set of ex Italeri ones instead. The canopy was also rather rough, but responded reasonably to a dip in Klear floor polish.