ARE THE FULLY REVISED HELLER MOULDS ANY GOOD? - OR ARE THEY JUST OLD AIRFIX KITS?

So much for being new!

Heller is ok till it comes to their decals. Need to at times use thinned out pva glue to help them to stick down. Then you can apply your decal set. You should get some .010 sheet plastic to fill some of those gaps or putty a half of tube to fill those gaps.

I built the 2 seat Heller version a few years ago - ok for an old kit.
As you mentioned it was an Airfix mold but with soft heller plastic.
From what see, just the decals and box art are new now.

Do you think that this is a good example of how things have improved in aircraft kits.

Thanks, coffee’s on me, or, for more filler.

Well, you certainly are not one to back-away from a challenge! Some modelers would have quit building, others would roll up their sleeves and get to work. Only way to get better/gain confidence/figure out work-arounds is to jump in. I salute you. Cheers

More patience then me. That would have ended up a paint mule or in the bin for me. Even in the 90's there were far better fitting kits around then that.

Sehr gute Lösung mit offenen Kabine. Danke für das Review, hab auch noch ein Heller Bausatz da liegen, müsste ich die Geschichte auch mal anschauen😄

I don’t even own the clamps needed to build this kit. It would have ended up in the bin. Clearly there is a category of modeller who enjoys the building challenge, but it’s not for me.

i could see a reason to buy heller's model if it's something rare, but with all flankers out there there's no way one would want it

Heller and Airfix were under the same ownership from about the mid-80s to the mid-00s when Airfix was bought over by Hornby. So they shared a lot of tooling then, with the kits actually moulded in Heller's French factory then. Heller seemed to take ownership of some of their former joint kits like this, the 1/48 Jaguar, 1/72 Concorde and a few others.

For this kit (and Heller/Airfix MiG-29 from the same time) Airfix sold the single seat boxing while Heller did the two seater. For a good few years the Airfix/Heller kit was actually the most accurate 1/72 Su-27 on the market. They were never easy to build though.

Better of buying academy's 1/48 su-27. For 30 € heller's option is waaay too old to be sold at that price point.

If any of you thought Revell is shameless with their models, Heller is the whole new level of the audacity and arrogance. If these kits were cheap, I could understand. If they were representing some niche topics - ok with that. But they are out there on the market competing with 2-3 classes higher tooling sometimes with the same prize tags. I remember they have promised a brand new E-2 Hawkeye back in the beginning of 2023. Even thou it's not my matter of interests, I was keeping an eye of this upcoming model kit just to ensure Heller decided to follow the Airfix and actually treat the customer base as intelligent people. Last month I found a few pictures of testing molds of this brand new Hawkeye. It's a completely new model judging the sprues' layout and far more parts included, but the quality was as much meeh as like this Flanker. Maybe the molds require some refining, but the overall sight was bad, really bad for 2024. Even CZ manufactured new tooling short run kits have sharper details and small parts. I wonder how they have managed to remain on the surface with their crappy and ridiciulously expensive offers this long, while other companies raised bar so high that Heller's kits can't even touch them jumping with both hands in the air. Revell at least has some very unique good kits they like to reissue (BV-222 or recent Ar-240 for example), some old time classics like Tornado or Typhoons in 1/72 still keeping the shape, while Heller has nothing like that. I mean, they have some specific French stuff, but these are ancient kits now with all the problems with fitting and almost non existent details.

You can fix anything. But why? hahaha, this kit is just awful. You did a great job. The figure is very good, you did a fantastic job. Great video.

If someone at Tamiya would have designed those molds, they would have been given a short sword and led out back !