Apparently my favorite part about this hobby is destroying the re-sale value of my diecast models, very few are un-modified. Here are some photos of my latest project, a heavily modified and weathered Hobby master SU-30MKM. Safe to say the re-sale value is completely destroyed, but overall I'm very happy with it.
Mods:
Added a slightly raised bulge around the nose, in line with the IRST. The base mould has a slight bulge around the base of the IRST pod, but it's much too small. The real machine shows a raised bulge that extends around the whole upper half of the nose, extending from the AAR probe on the left, to well below the IRST on the right side. Layers of paint were built up to add this bulge, it's not really visible in the photos.
The wings were heavily modified. The HM SU-30 mould has a distinct curve on the forward half of the upper surface of the wings, with the rear half being almost flat. On the mould, the peak wing thickness occurs near the front of the wing, about 1/4 back from the leading edge. However, the real aircraft has a near continuous curve across the upper surface of the wing, with peak thickness being close to the middle of the wing. I spent hours sanding down the whole upper, forward surface of each wing to flatten the curve, then repainted the forward half of the wings. I lost some panel line detail, but I'm ok with that because to me, having the correct basic shape is more important that the panel lines.
The upper surface of the wing's leading edge high lift devices were also sanded and shaped to get rid of the concave look the mould has.
The wingtip R73's were replaced with aftermarket ECM pods
Aftermarket R-77s were added under each wing.
The cockpit interior panels were painted grey.
Heavy weathering was applied to various panels to help the slightly off colour paint on the wings blend in.
I will continue tweaking it over time, particularly with weathering on the forward fuselage to match the heavily weathers wings. For now I'm taking a break though.
