Taking a dip

Second in the set of Russian trainers is the Sukhoi Su-28. This is a trainer version of the Su-25 Frogfoot, one of those ground-pounding aircraft that seems to be composed of more ordnance than airframe.

The kit was produced by MSV, a short-lived (Ukrainian?) company that produced only two models that I know of. I suspect that the recent kit released by Art Model of the Su-28 is likely from the same molds, but not having seen it in person I can’t confirm that. The molding is somewhat basic, with thick plastic pieces on the order of the proverbial Russian tractor, but they seem to be fitting together well enough. There is some putty involved, but not on the scale of the Yak-130 so far.

In fact, the main disaster of this build had nothing to do with the kit. I was in the process of getting the wings attached to the fuselage and had a bottle of Tenax open on the bench. My last bottle of the discontinued Tenax, to be exact. So you can see where this is going. The ham fist knocked the bottle over, Tenax pooled around the bottom of the Su-28 sitting on the workbench, and dialog not heard since the last Teamster convention was unleashed upon the land. I pulled the model from the liquid and basically didn’t touch it for an hour. Thankfully the Tenax just air dried and there was no structural damage to the model. The surface is very shiny now, due to the chemical reaction, but it seems to have hardened up without distortion. I’ll be buffing it up to get any surface anomalies taken care of. Thankfully nothing else was hit by the Tenax. I managed to retain half a bottle, but will need to be deciding on my replacement for the adhesive sooner than I expected. I’m no fan of cyanoacrylate, so maybe MEK or one of the other proprietary types. I use Testors liquid (in the black square bottle with the applicator) for many uses, but like the very thin and fast Tenax for welding things like the wing to fuselage joint.

And here is a photo of the Su-28’s current state. Next up is the canopy and possibly some wheel well painting.

Next: the MiG-AT and its exasperating intakes.