1/48 Sukhoi T10-1

(The Very First Flanker)

by Jan Mikes

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The story of the Sukhoi T10-1 

The very first prototype of the future Su-27, the Sukhoi T10-1 (Flanker A) first flew on May, 20, 1977.

The first test flights revealed some significant problems with the stability and performance of the new fighter prototype. Soon, it was obvious, that new fighter would not be able to match and exceed its counterpart, the F-15.  

Even in this situation, the command of the Soviet VVS (Air Force) pushed for an early start of the serial production of new fighter. However, professionalism of the Su-27’s design team head, Mikhail Simonov, lead him to propose a complete redesign of the airplane in order to live up to the original specifications. 

Finally, Sukhoi people received the go-ahead from the VVS command and the Soviet government to start complete redesign of the original concept. The new project started in beginning of 1980, and already in April 1981, first T10-S (or Flanker as we know it now) prototype was ready for the first test flight. 

Needless to say, that the courageous decision of the Sukhoi team to completely redesign the T10-1 have paid off… the T10-S (Flanker B) did outperform most expectations, and gave the VVS fighter equal or even superior to the U.S. F-15 Eagle. 

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The Project

Needless to say, I had to rework nearly everything on the kit. The project could be classified as  something between conversion and scratchbuilding.

As a base, I used the 1/48 Su-27 Mini Hobby Models/Zhengdefu/Trumpeter kit (it is cheap-horrible fit, inaccuracies, simplifications in this kit were not problem, as I had to rework everything anyway).

I do not have many comments re the process of the building of the model. I think the pictures say it better than words. 

Here you can see the "'visualization" I did before I actually started to ‘cut’ … this is some sort of the plan to make the T10-1 out of the Su-27 kit. 

Legend:

1)    Scratchbuilt parts

2)    Plastic from the original 1/48 Su-27

3)    Areas cut and then modified with other portions of the fuselage from the original kit

4)    Plastic card strips are blue sections on this part of fuselage, then it was sanded and reshaped

About 2cm was cut out here from the original Su-27 kit and the fuselage halves were then blues together again (of course, similar extensive work was done on the lower part of the fuselage… you can see it on the in-progress pics) 

Here is the ‘step by step’ progress to make the T10-1:

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And at the end (after 10 months), the finished model looks like this:

Conclusions 

The project was started in January 2005, and it was finished in October of the same year.  Overall, the work went smoothly. The main issue is to plan everything carefully, and to make a clear picture of where to cut what before you really start to work with the plastic.

Now, my 1/48 Sukhoi T10-1 is finished, and I am probably the only person in the world, who has this airplane in 1/48 in his display case.  ….Which is definitely source of pride for a modeller in me.  :-)

Cheers,

Jan

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Photos and text © by Jan Mikes