Sovietwarplanes

As an obsessive fan of Cold War Soviet stuff, I'm really excited to see this one.
The T-49 was a single-copy research platform developed by Sukhoi in response to the growing problem of locating ever larger and more sophisticated radar units inside conical, moving center-bodies that characterized Soviet high performance designs up to this point.  The genealogy of the T-49 is a bit complex.  The aircraft itself was a conversion of the abandoned T-37, which itself was a conversion of one of the PT-8 pre-production aircraft.  All these models were products of the development program that eventually led to the Su-9 interceptor.  Why is all this important?  Because Amodel's kit of the T-49 is based on their Su-9 and 11 kits.  While the Su-9 and 11 were extremely similar, the earlier development aircraft did have an assortment of differences, as one expects of development programs.  This means Amodel's T-49 may not be entirely accurate, as just about everything on the kit aft of the canopy is identical to their earlier kits.  I have not delved into my resources extensively enough yet to tell the extent of this, but be warned that they easily could be some inaccuracies that pop-up.  This is a little surprising, as my past experience with Amodel has always impressed me with their attention to detail and accuracy.
All this aside, this kit is typical Amodel.  It's low-pressure injection technology, with the typical clean-up and fit issues I've come to associate with their products.The new parts of this kit are limited to the forward fuselage, which assembles in a rather fiddly manner, and the decals, which represent the one and only copy of this aircraft.  The T-49 was a really interesting looking aircraft, and I'm really looking forward to building this one.
The Su-9 has a really rich, interesting family of development models, and I'd love to see some of the others, like the T-3, PT-7, and T-37.  That Amodel would produce a T-49 give me hope!