S-37 Eagle
The recent first flight of the Sukhoi S-37 prototype multirole fighter demonstrates that the company has been able to keep its technology developments active, despite the condition of the Russian economy.
Sukhoi's goal appears to be to develop a follow-on to the Su-27 family: a large aircraft which can be developed for a wide range of missions, including air superiority, interdiction/strike, and maritime attack. Maximum speed is quoted as around M2, lower than that of the Su-27; the designers' aim appears to have been to combine stealth, agility, and warload/radius performance.
The S-37 is larger than either the Su-27 or F-22: the prototype has 150kN-thrust Aviadvigatel D-30F6 engines (also used on the MiG-31), but they may be replaced by more advanced Lyulka/Saturn AL-37 or AL-41 engines with vectored thrust when these are available.
Span is reported as 16.7 m, with a length (presumably excluding nose probe) of 22.6 m.
This translates into 1:72 scale as - Span = 232 mm and Length = 314 mm.
Modelling The S-37
Fuselage
As soon as I saw the first pictures of the S-37 I wanted to make a model of it. I collected all the available pictures and as soon as a drawing appeared I began to see how it might be modelled.
Looking at the real aircraft , the first thing I noticed - after the forward swept wings - was the large circular intakes that were reminiscent of the General Dynamics F-111. I dug out an old Airfix kit of the Aardvark and, sure enough, there was enough of a resemblance to make a start.
I extended the intake lips at the top and bottom to meet the fuselage and left off the splitter plates and shock cone to give a simple quarter circle intake. I extended the intake trunking on the inside of the fuselage and added a new splitter plate from plastic card .
I chopped of the F-111's nose just in front of the intakes, leaving the fixed portion of the swing wings in place (it was later replaced with plastic card).
As the real S-37 apparently utilises the forward fuselage from the Su-27 Flanker, I decided to do the same on my kit, so I chopped off the nose section from an old Nakotne Su-35 kit and cemented it to the F-111 main body. The rear end also came from the Su-35 kit, with the engine nacelles being sawn off just in front of where the kits fins would be. The S-37 has the engines closer together than a Flanker, so the rear end was sawn in half lengthwise and a section was removed before they were cemented back together, this time closer together according to my plans.
The whole thing looked a bit messy and was very delicate - the front and rear parts were of a different cross-section to the main F-111 body, so lots of plastic card pieces were stuck on to strengthen the joints and blend the three profiles (front, middle and rear) together.
The model was beginning to look vaguely like an S-37 - at least it was the right length and the nose and intakes were in the right place.
The wing roots and fixed tail boom 'platforms' were added from laminations of thick plastic card cemented to the fuselage sides and more small pieces of scrap plastic card were added to build up the profile to an approximation of the final shape.
The forward LERX over the intakes was added from plastic card - with smaller pieces added to increase the depth where it met the upper fuselage in the form of 'steps'. Plastic card pieces were added to either side of the nose to blend in the circular section nose with the square-section F-111 fuselage.
At this point the model looked like - Photo 6 Photo 7.
The model was now liberally covered with loads of Milliput filler and this was smoothed down with a wet finger before it set hard. Once dry it was sanded down to give a smooth surface.
I added wheel wells for the main wheels, but I didn't want to weaken the nose, so I just used the part of the nosewell from the origian Su-35 kit that hadn't been filled in and left the rest alone - not strictly accurate, but it would do.
Wings
Having chopped up an F-111 kit, I decided to try and utilise the kits wings so they were placed over the plans to check their suitability. They had enough span but the chord was far too small, so they were cut in half spanwise and a section of plastic card was added to increase the chord. A section was removed from the root to make the wings sweep forward. - Photo 8.
The wings were cemented to the fuselage using wire pins for strength and blended in with filler.
Fins, Booms, Tailplanes and Canards
The fins were cut down items from the Revell Flanker kit, whilst the tailbooms were different lengths cut from an 8mm dia plastic knitting needle - (apparently, one boom contains a tranmitter and the other the receiver - which is the reason the booms are of different lengths so that they don't interfere with each other !).
The horizontal tailplanes come from the F-111 kit cut to shape, whilst the canards are the Su-35 tailplanes cut to size.
The whole model now looked like :- Photo 9, Photo10, Photo11
After tidying up any flaws and giving the model a thorough clean, a grey primer coat was sprayed on using Halfords Grey Plastic Primer.
The results looked like :- Photo 12 Photo 13 Photo 14 Photo 15
Once the primer was rubbed down and I was satisfied with the surface finish, the model was given a coat of Halfords Appliance White, which is a good dense white acrylic car paint.
The nose radome, and all the white dielectric panels were masked off in preparation for the top coat of paint. Looking at all the published photographs it appears that the S-37 is finished in a very dark blue colour scheme with a white radome and dielectric panels. It carries red stars on the upper and lower wings and tail, the bort number 'Blue 01', yellow intake lips, yellow-backed Sukhoi 'CY' logos on the intake flanks and smart red/white graded stripes on the wing and fin tips and intakes.
I chose a can of Halfords 'Ford Midnight Blue' as a guesstimate of the real colour and three or four coats were sprayed on to give a nice dense colour. The stars & bort numbers 'Blue 01' came from the spares box and the yellow-backed 'CY' logos came from a Russian Knights decal sheet. The markings I thought would give me problems were the 'graded' red/white stripes, but the solution proved to be fairly easy. I already had some red/blue/white stripes from my Su-37 conversion so these were cut to length and black cross-stripes of varying thickness were added using a waterproof pen to give the 'graded' effect. Once applied to the model, the blue centre stripe and the black cross-stripes blend into the background Midnight Blue and disappear.
The exhaust nozzles are scratch-built from plastic card wrapped around a dowel of suitable diameter, the legs and wheels are from the Su-35 kit and the windscreen and canopy are from the Airfix Su-27 kit - with the centre IRST ball removed from the windscreen and a replacement added offset to starboard in front of the windscreen.
There you have it - it may not be 100% accurate - but then there is currently no completely accurate kit of the Su-27 Flanker available - but it looks the part, and it is all mine !!!
