Zactomodels 1/32 Su-27 Wingtip Missile Rails First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

Zactomodels is a small aftermarket company that does some of the most incredible engineering and casting to correct selected beloved subjects. This time around, they've added another nice option for the Trumpeter 1/32 Su-27/Su-30 Flanker kits.

As you may recall, Trumpeter produced a magnificent Su-27 Flanker B kit in 1/32 scale, and this has been followed by the Su-27UB trainer and the Su-30MMK strike fighter variants. These kits provide an interesting cross-section of combat variants of the Flanker series and Zactomodels produces a nice range of enhancements for all of them.

This latest release provides a simple modification to the stock Su-27 or Su-30 kits - the wingtip missile rails. One of the biggest flaws in most modern aircraft kits is the design of the missile rails. Typical kits usually have a blank surface where the rails would be and a couple of mounting pins to attach the kit's weapons. Zactomodels has tackled the two large wingtip rails with nicely detailed missile rails, so nice in fact that I wouldn't want to arm these as they look too good empty!

The set comes with brass wire that goes into the two holes molded into the inboard surface of te rail and provide a solid attachment to the kit's wings.

As usual, this is a nice bit of engineering from Zactomodels to give you more options in Flanker variants out of the stock Trumpeter kit. When added to the correction sets previously released, your Trumpeter kit will stand up to anyone's scrutiny on the contest table.

You can learn more about this and other project from the Zactomodels website at http://www.zactomodels.com.

My sincere thanks to Zactomodels for this review sample!