Goldberg Sukhoi
I'm just finishing my sukhoi now. I started building it almost a year ago. It is a very quick building kit. Relatively anyways because it is rather large. It's not to complex otherwise. I can't give you any reports on flight yet because it is to cold to fly here now. So when spring arrives I'll add a flight report as well.
Wings
The wingss are very straight forward except for mounting the under carriage. Just follow the instructions and you'll be fine. Everything fit perfectly on mine. No problems. Use all the jig blocks provided and you'll end up with a good straight wing. Remember to build light as always for better flying. When you get to attaching the undercarriage remember to reinforce it a lot. There are many cases of undercarriages ripping off listed on rec.models.rc.air I used some fiberglass to reinforce mine and also added plywood doublers to all the wing ribs in the area of the landing gear. Hopefully this will help it from ripping out. I had one of the newer kits with the additional 3/8" square basswood reinforcements. I didn't change anything else on the wing. If I could go back and do it again I'd try to change the structure considerably to mount the under carriage to the fuselage. Hopefully some changes will be made to this area of the plane when the kit is reintroduced in the spring.
Tail Feathers
The tail feathers are very easy to assembly. Just build as plans and instructions show.
Fuselage
The fuselage sides and parts fit well for the most part. Mine had very good die cutting. I've heard of others that didn't. Take your time sanding the parts and make sure everything fits well before glueing. A little extra time now will produce a much stronger fuselage with much better glue joints. I chose the option of mounting my elevator servo's on the tail. If I were to build this again I would mount the rudder servo on the tail as well. I did change and use a dubro 4-40 pull system as opposed to the one Goldberg provides. I just couldn't trust myself to get those cables soldered to clamps for a pull pull application. I much prefer the crimps that Dubro provides.
Finishing it all up
I covered my sukhoi all in white monokote and painted it with Red Lusterkote. This was my first attempt at using Lusterkote will most likely be my last. It doesn't go on well at all. Lots of runs and splatter. I don't recommend this paint to anyone. I used the standard plastic cowl and belly pan that are included with the kit. I reinforced them with fiberglass as suggested. Hopefully they will hold out for a while anyways. Until I can afford to replace them with fiberglass. I also don't want to ruin a good set of fiberglass ones if my undercarriage reinforcements decide to fail. I chose a YS 120 NC for power. Everyone seemed to recommend it and I got a good price on it. I wired all my fuel tube connections as I've heard stories of fuel tube and even klunks being blown off by the engine pressure. I am using Futabe S148's for all my control surfaces except for rudder. One for each aileron and one for each half of the rudder. Because my radio doesn't have good enough mixing to electronically mix the rudder servo's together I wired them with a wire harness and attached my pushrod to the top of a circle control horn for one half and the bottom of the other so that when they turn in opposite directions both control surfaces go one way. I also added ball bearing conversions from LJM to all servo's in this plane. For the rudder I used a Hitec HS 605BB. It seems like a pretty good servo so far. Very smooth drive train. One problem I had installing the control systems was with the throttle pushrod. The supplied easy connectors won't work with the included throttle cable. They are to big to grip it. So to solve this I wrapped the cable with masking tape. Put it through the servo and screwed down on it. Then I coated the masking tape with thin CA to stiffin it up and create a permanent connection. It seems to be working well so far.
Well that about sums this up. I will add a few flight reports when spring arrives and I get to fly it.