Oddly enough, I asked FC about this very issue a few days ago. I was trying to make a variant for myself that was essentially just an Su-27 with the additional hardpoints. I figured I'd follow FC's instructions about adding the Su-33 mini mod, except not actually adding the canards. Only, after doing this and removing the entry for the canards, I noticed that the canards were still being applied to the aircraft. Since the canards were blue, I figured they were using my existing canards so I went about creating a new plane who's file name and inis were named Su-26 (in game it was still an Su-27). This time, no canards, but no pylons either...
I've missed something...