krustovsky

And some more Happy modelling:)

Seems I finally reached the finishline. Unfortunately I have simply no fotography skills, so here are some unedited iphone shots in bad lighting. And another challenge occured surprisingly. Where to store and show the model? At the moment I am investigating some glass showcase manufactures. One word: expensive;) We will see. In the end I learned a lot during the build and I am happy with the result. Not a masterpiece, but how could it be otherwise. In spite of some style and execution errors, I think it is showable. The seemless Intakes:)

A small teaser;) Fortunately -after over twelve months- the masking could be removed without problems:) I am really happy so far. Still a lot of stuff to do. Of course I broke off two of the very tiny master static dispensers while handling the model during installation of the pylons and stabilizers. So I have to correct this first. But I am making progress:) As always comments and critics are appreciated.

Thanks. The canopy was painted and polished afterwards from the inside. It’s a mix of Tamiya clear smoke and clear yellow.

Fortunately most figures are resin and you can peel off your paintwork as often as you want;) And my skills are far away from being professional. One Example? What you see is the result of two kits. I detroyed the first canopy by overheating it during the polishing process. I spilled laquer thinner over the left horizontal stabilizer 4 weeks ago, destroying the paintwork and melting the plastic. What a mess, resulting in one week of filling, sanding, reengraving, priming and painting... And what scares me most is removing the masking tape. It was placed over a year ago. So wish me luck;)

After a long hiatus this project is still going on. Here is some progress. After the really time consuming process of decalling with all the stencils, I applied the next X-22 gloss coat. Then the panel lining followed along with some oil weathering. After all I was able to apply a flat coat on most parts with my new toy. Unfornately I underestimated the sheer amount of colour-flow through this beast, so I run out of XF-86. The top side of the fuselage will follow. Anyway, the finish is in sight;) Already finished parts, ready for final installiation

Looking at the fotos, I think you are right. But in real they seem to look not that pronounced. And I finished the basic paintwork just today. Sometimes it's better to step back, make a break and come back with another - more neutral - point of view. For example the pic of the vertical stabilizer looks just right to me. I have to think about it;) On the other hand, I think it will be much more simple to tone the preshading down, then to bring it back. And finally another point I learned from my test samples, is that the matt cote kills a lot of contrast.

Sorry for the crappy lighting, but these are only iPhone fotos... Basic paintwork done and all major components are ready for glosscote. Decals and several weathering stages will follow. Thanks for looking in. Comments are always welcome.

Only airbrush so far. The following weathering steps will include further airbrush effects and a lot of oil/brush work.

Progress: Next: Topside of the fuselage...

And finally the vertical stabilizers preshaded...

Update;) Preshading almost finished (the vertical stabilizers arn't done yet).

Thank you! First polished in- and outside as described. Then airbrushed from the inside (!) with a mix of Tamiya clear yellow and smoke. Finally I polished it again - very, very carefully, not to polish through the thin coat of clear color;) The advantage is that the outside of the canopy can always receive a repolishing, if necessary. Thanks for looking in and all the motivating encouragement.

Unfortunately I did not find the time to start with the preshading process:( Finally I hope to start the upcoming week... But anyway here is a pic of the finished pylons. Maybe I will add some weathering after mounting them on the airframe. The plane will be displayed witout any loadout, so the really good eduard pylons had to be used. It is unbelievable how many stencil-decals can fit on one pylon;)

There is simply a lack of hobbytime:( But here is a little progress in painting Maskolchipping toned down chips, nosecone ready for masking The eduard pylons are already finished (pics will follow), also are all pitottubes and IRST. So next is preshading the airframe and preparing the Base

It is polished by dremel, using a cotton polishing wheel and/or a cotton swap (cut into half and plugged into the dremel) and Tamiya polishing compound (first fine, then finish). I don't like futured canopies;) If something goes wrong (and that happens often to me), you have a problem with a future canopy. With the polished one you can mask the frame and polish it again. You can even polish out the Tamiya clear (which I used to tint the windscreen from the inside) to correct small imperfections caused by dust. The most important thing about polishing with a motortool like the

I was observing you guys closely, so I could adapt your techniques quite quickly;) The Kit I choose is simply crap. But I like russian aircraft. Here is my last progress. Even simple parts like this vertical stabilizer has to shimmed, nearly completely reengraved and every rivet has to be redrilled by 0.3mm drill... Exhausting! But in fact I am slowly closer to the painting stage, which is what I really like.

As I told, restarted with some 1:32 projects about 3 years ago, but all of them are gone to the shelf of doom due to different reasons - honestly I think none of them will ever be resurrected. 1:48 is more forgiving and build time seems to be shorter (Shorter?! The progress you can see above took me around 6 month... Time is a real problem!). I tried some figure painting to develop skills that are enough for pilot figures/diorama. Maybe sometimes I will become a better figure painter and skills will be probably sufficient enough for standalone figures/busts. In my opinion that can be true

For your reference. This is what I tried to replicate. A bit more of oilweathering will follow after the completed paint job.

The fit of the aires stuff was as expected - not good... Most parts of the set I did not use. As you can see in the pics above, I rejected the resin side panels to avoid thinning the upper half of the fuselage extensively. I styrene scratched the sidepanel instead, using the aires parts as a template. The photoetched HUD had to be lowered, it was not designed for a closed canopy. Suprisingly the pilot was a dropfit, no problems here. I really hope everything is still in place, when it’s time to remove the canopy masking...

Thank you all for your nice comments:) painting sequence is: 1. surfacer 1200 2. preshading Mr Paint black/white 3. Mr Paint camo (MRP-196,-197,-198, masking with panzer putty and corrections done freehand) 4. postshading tamiya smoke clear 4. clearcoat Tamiya X22 + X20A 5. before dry misting mr. color levelling thinner 6. decalling 7. clearcoat Tamiya X22 + X20A 8. enamel wash/weathering 9. mattcoat Tamiya XF-86 + X20A then oil weathering, which is not done on the sample Surfacer and the X22 clearcoats h

the fuselage. A never ending odyssey of filling, sanding, scribing... the master pitot After closing the fuselage, I couldn't resist to paint the bare metal around the engines Started to make a painting sample to test the my painting/weathering plan so that's the present state of the project. p.s.: sorry for the picture quality, they are taken with my mobile phone...

The cockpit again, pilot in place:)

Aires Exhaust...

Aires cockpit and pilot