I’ve recently began the construction of a Sukhoi Su-15TM Flagon-E from Trumpeter. I was amazed with the quality of the kit (the second from Trumpeter I build up). I made some corrections (e.g. like the angle of the radome) but I was very satisfied with Trumpeter.
Nevertheless, I always try to get info about the planes I build and I made myself a collection of photographs via internet about the type. In a pair of those shots there was clearly depicted a Su-15 radar and at first I was pleased when I verified the great likeness between the kits parts and the real thing. But at a second view, some weeks later, let me know that all the planes behind (parking side by side right on the same flight line where the depicted one was) were Su-15s of the type called by NATO Flagon-A, the earlier Flagon model, as I could confirm by watching their noses single wheel main landing gear.
One of the main differences between the so-called Flagon-A and the Flagon-E (the latter, the one I was building) is -apart the couple of wheels under their noses and the wings shape- the type of radar. Trumpeter seems to emphasize that as they allow their clients to display (or not) the entrails of their avionics by placing the radome in close or open position. So, if I later buy a Flagon-A from the same firm, I could compare their differences. But those photos seemed to show the Flagon-A radar and her disc caractheristics were the same in my suppossed Flagon-E (unless the very rare situation in which the radar depicted belonged to a Flagon-E while all the rest down the line, had been Flagon-As…). Up to where I know, at last those radar discs must be different between those two different devices… or weren’t them?
All this stuff made me uncertain, so Does anybody have a Su-15TM (That is, the FLAGON-E) radar photograph or at last a thecnical drawing to share with me? It was called Taifun-M by their builders and NATO called it “Twin Scan”, and it was a direct evolution from the Smerch radar that equipped the Mig-25P by basically adapting it to the avionics bay in the Flagon. With this image I could try to make up something similar with my own hands or, in the worst case, I will end my model with a very closed radome.
Thanks in advance.