A big thanks to all those who helped me out a couple of months back with things to see and do in Prague. A great weekend doing my bit for the Czech economy; part of which entailed a trip to the MPM shop.
A box that caught my eye there was an Su-24M, but not a boxing with which I was familiar. A quick look showed that it was not a re-pop of the Italeri / Dragon kit, but apparently a new tooling. The kit appears to have been produced by a company that is new to me, but I'm not entirely sure what their name is: where the name should be is "ST" (Latin script, not Cyrillic), with a picture of a stylised delta winger aircraft, underneath which is "OOO", then "STRIM" in Cyrillic. The address on the side of the box is in Voronezh. Although the tooling is unfamiliar, the style is similar to the VES Su-15 kit: Surface detail made up from recessed lines and lines of recessed "rivets" (but which feature a raised lip of plastic around them, giving a very rough surface finish). The most obvious thing about the kit compared to the Italeri kit is the incorporation of separate leading and trailing edge flaps. Long-term readers of Scale Models International may recall Ken Duffey's article on building the Fencer with the flaps deployed. I myself was sufficiently motivated to have a go myself; the half finished kit is still in the loft somewhere. This kit should make it much easier, although the trailing edge flaps are single pieces rather than being double slotted, but it should be possible to that with plasticard if you think it's worth it. The kit is made up from three sprues: a large light grey one with nose halves, main fuselage halves, fin halves, rudder, wing undersides, flaps, intake splitters and wing sweep mechanism; a smaller dark grey sprue has the wing lower halves, horizontal stabilisers, undercarriage and interior bits. The clear sprue has the windscreen, individual hatches, glove fairing landing lights and targeting system window. The cockpit has detailed four part seats, with the panel detail as decals (which will need to be cut to fit over the radar scope molded onto the main panel). No joy in trying to find a Neomega interior set, so don't know if that would fit. The wheel wells are enclosed with a little detail, the main wheels come in two halves, the tail pipes are split into two halves with a single piece reheat can on the end and some intake trunking is provided as part of a single piece that includes the lower surfaces of both wing gloves. A rather complex wing sweep mechanism appears to make the wing pylons rotate as the wing sweeps; not sure it would work, and I'm not sure if I want to try it (especially with the flaps down). No weapons or tanks are included with the kit (although weapons are shown on the box art). The clear parts are a bit rough and look like they could do with a polish. The decals are by Prodecals and include numerals 0-9 in white (stencil) and red outlined in white (solid). Unfortunately the red on white appears a little out of register. The instructions show two grey / white camouflage options: White on Red (not sure how that's meant to work, but the box art has this also, accompanied by White on Red "21", with similar tail art) "29", including fin markings of a hedgehog riding on the back of a bomb carrying crow, and Red "44" with nose art of a bull for in front of the intakes. Unfortunately the style of "4" used in the instructions is different from that provided on the decals, and the white numerals provided for repeating the number on the fin only have two "4"s. MPM were selling the kit for 599 Cz. Crowns, (~45 Crowns to the UK pound), but on enquiry they appeared to only have the one. Looks like a challenge, but as a new kit of a Russian aircraft type, gratefully received.
Jon.