AMK MiG-31 in 48th

[ya-gabor]

The most important part of the MiG-31 weapon system is the R-33 missiles. What AMK did with it looks excellent. The most important plus is the use of the slide mold technology so there is no need to play around with the fixing the fins. You get a one piece missile where you need to add the back end of it, the small folded fins and the small “thing” under the rear part. Minimal gluing and basically no filling was required. There was some need for careful sanding to get rid of the microscopic mold lines. Just on one side was there need for some super glue as a filler. No problem at all. After a complete wash to get rid of all grease and dirt from initial handling of the missile a toothpick was inserted into one of the location holes on top side. Grey Model Master primer was used as a base for my paint work and to see if there are any mistakes left on the plastic.

I left it to dry and in the meantime took a look at the real missile. An extensive search was made on the net and in my own archive of photos of the real missile. Fortunately there is lots of information around so there was no problem in planning the painting. There are several schemes for the missile used by the Russians. The most common was chosen where the overall metallic structure is “interrupted” with some white panels. Of course the glass covered nose cone has an off white colour which is common on all version. I had seen some where the front panels (after the nose cone) are also white and there are few examples where the whole body was metallic. Anyway the choice was for the mostly used scheme. Since I only had the plastic parts and the decals were long way from printing the initial idea was to do it without any markings. No way. OK but then what can I do. There are lots of markings on the missile body. The text could be reproduced from similar looking decals in the spare box but there are lots of other, nonstandard markings too. Most of them a black lines and black triangles. As a base black was painted in the areas of the markings and extra thin masking tape was applied over them to reproduce the markings. The leading edges of control surfaces have a light grey edge so some masking tape was used here too. The flat surface of the rectangle detonator/sensor (??) panels on the front part of the missile have a grey surface so this was also masked.

Initial layer of Model Master Metallizer Stainless Steel was sprayed on. This is the closest to the original colour of the missiles. After this came the interesting part with some polishing and adding extra colour with Tamiya weathering metal pigments. The rocket efflux was painted matt black but in the center one could see grey/black/white concentric circles of the exhaust. Also on the inside walls there were some white stencils, but this was to come later. The weathered metal surface was sealed with Model Master varnish.

I have to thank the Czech Annetra company for providing me with some test samples of the new AMK kit.

More soon.

Best regards

Gabor

[jgrease]

Nice! If the missiles are this good, I can't wait to see the whole kit!

John

[ya-gabor]

Nice! If the missiles are this good, I can't wait to see the whole kit!

John

The kit itself is realy nice! Unfortunately I received only the parts which were already available in September this year from the early test samples. Most of the fuselage/wings/cockpit and the missiles. So it was a start to see how it works with some paint on it. I only did one missile for the moment. Will have to waite for the whole kit later in December.

Best regards

Gabor

[Sietse]

Looks great.

Sietse

[mario krijan]

Gabor you can make nose section painted :-) great work and nice technology :-)

[ya-gabor]

So here is the second part of the R-33 missile build.

After thorough drying it was the turn for the white parts. The easiest was the nose cone with its off white colour.

The bigger problem was with the main body white areas. Yes I should have done this first before the overall metal but even this way it was not impossible. Here and there the sealer varnish came off but this was not a big problem as the metal surface under it was intact. Some weathering on the white areas was followed by minimal varnish in preparing for the decals.

The Eduard MiG-21 decal sheet provided most of the text. There are construction numbers on the trailing edge of every fin and control surface. Small rectangles of black decal was used to imitate the fin locking points at the points where the braces meet with the fins. The rectangular connector for the umbilical cord has a black cover, there are two connectors with red covers on top. The sliding part of the brace-missile rail connection surface is bright metallic.

Just as the four front braces. On the back end the rim of the exhaust has a different metallic rig around it and there are six circular plates with red centers to them. The after end of the folding fin axis is brown-red in colour. There are two white holes as well as a single red one on the after end section. Now the only thing left is to make the red nose cone protection cover and the custom missile cart used to winch up the R-33 under the belly of the Mig.

I have to thank the Czech Anettra company for providing the test examples of the new AMK kit.

Best regards

Gabor

[Falconxlvi]

Thanks for the detailed explanation and pics - this will be a huge reference when I get around to building the kit!

[mario krijan]

Gabor can you post some photos of real R-33 :-)

[janman]

The missile looks sweet!

[ya-gabor]

Thanks for the comments.

A quick search on the net would result in many good photos of the real R-33 missile. This is a general kind of answer but I have posted the above pictures of my R-33 missile and Nazar came up with his own photos showing a live missile on an operational aircraft. These photos are far more and much better than what you will find with a general search on the net. The photos are Copyright by Nazar!

http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/img_1191897_1447258109_rrrrsrrrrrjor-325.jpg.html

http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/img_1191897_1447258105_rrrrsrrrrrjor-305.jpg.html

http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/img_1191897_1447258111_rrrrsrrrrrjor-329.jpg.html

Hope you will be able to see with this links. All this is on scalemodels.ru here:

http://scalemodels.ru/modules/forum/viewtopic_t_48220_start_260.html

Best regards

Gabor

[Nazar]

Gabor always welcome. Comes to the matter of the aircraft will be more detailed photos.

Incidentally ready decal from the Behemoth. After about a week I will.

[mario krijan]

Gabor absolutley, but just want to have them on one place :-)

[Falconxlvi]

Thanks for posting the links! Great detailed pictures!

[Crazy Snap Captain]

Man, that looks wicked. This is all OOB? Amazing stuff.

[ya-gabor]

Man, that looks wicked. This is all OOB? Amazing stuff.

It is out of box, just paint and decals and a bit of research.

Best regards

Gabor

[Pal]

Very nice R-33 Gábor! :)

How about some other "small" detail parts of the MiG-31 kit? Looking forward to seeing those too...

Cheers

[boom175]

What do you use for your masking? Extremely sharp lines there by the fin and missile body especially with that band in the middle. Masking is a "challenge" for me on these parts.. any advice would be appreciated.

[11bee]

What an incredible "mini-model". Very, very impressive example of state of the art plastic.

[erik_g]

Ok, so the missile is two parts, kind of.. but it looks like it is super detailed using all kinds of scratch built or after market items.. excellent painting and as far as I can see, an excellent kit! I will try very hard to put the same effort in painting my own R-33 missiles when I get the kit. I am very much looking forward to see what you will be able to do with the cockpit!

[Martin @ AMK Models]

[ya-gabor]

Plain Tamiya tape was used as can be seen on one of the photos. For the thin black lines the 0.3 or 0.4 mm version was used. The triangles were cut freehand from the same tape.

As mentioned before I should have painted the white parts of the body first. Don’t ask me why, but this time I got carried away and did the metal first and only later the white body part. As for the nose cone it was far easier to do it later, anyway it wasn’t the same colour as the body parts so no problems here.

The wings were masked with Tamiya tape with the place for the braces was cut from the tape. For this one master template was made from paper, trimmed to fit exactly over the braces and this template was used to cut out all the masking tapes. The masking tape was “handled” several times on its sticky side to make it less adhesive. I wanted to protect the Model Master Sealer varnish. The trick worked, but as said before you can avoid all of this if you paint the white first and only after that do the metal surfaces.

As for the sharp lines, any under spray (there was some here and there) was removed with either a new scalpel blade or a sharpened toothpick.

The center in the rocket efflux was done with “Punch and Die” from different spares box decals. Where I could find a solid piece of colour on the decal sheet, circles were cut and applied one over the other.

The intention of the whole build was to try out the AMK R-33 missiles and see what can be made of it with some paint. Also to have fun with the metallic paints and weathering powders. For the moment I don’t have an intention to do any further work on this kit, mainly because I am way behind with a project that I have promised to someone important.

The second reason is that I only have a test shoot of the kit and not the full version at the moment.

It was fun to paint the missile, but on a full kit I am not sure if one would want to go into such details as little is going to be seen of the R-33 when it is under the belly of the beast.

Unless you want to show the missiles separately.

Best regards

Gabor

[Aigore]

Outstanding, Gabor! :D

[ya-gabor]

Here is a bit more of the R-33 paint. Note that the movable fins have a light grey leading edge. The ring of rivets around the rear most edge of the missile came from a decal sheet. You will see that one of the foldable parts of the movable fins is still missing. Will add that later on. Since the missile came to me in a built state this little fins were already glued to it. One of them broke off very early in my work while the other one was almost perfectly welded to the missile so there was no chance of taking it off. It would have been easier to have this one separately too during the painting. While looking back at the painting it did not prove to be a big problem at all.

The small bit (hanging from the underside of the missile) was the only place where some filler was required get rid of the ejector pin mark. A drop of Gel type of superglue was used for this. After it dried scalpel and some sanding made it invisible. It was even possible to do this while the small thing was already on the missile. Anyone doing it from the sprue will have a bit easier task with this.

The sensor/detonator rectangular plates on the nose part have a very thin white edge on most missiles as well as at the base of the rectangles. While a thin white/light grey edge was added with a light grey pastel I have said no way am I going to do the same white line at the base. Believe that it is a silicon rubber sealer on the real thing. The rectangles have some rivets of darker colour but four near the end of the front rectangles and four near the front on the ones in the middle of the missile are white. Simply added some white paint and washed off the excess.

There is still a cover layer of varnish to go on the missile and then I will have to do the nose cover and maybe the custom built missile cart. It is a fascinating little device and if I have seen it right it lifts the missile to the launch rail with the help of two winches on the cart. On the bottom of the aircraft there are rings to which the cable from the winch is attached and the whole thing is lifted with the missile. A novel way.

Best regards

Gabor

[MoFo]

Interesting to note that the rivets on the wings are oblong, due to the draft angle of the tooling. Not that it'll be visible in anything other than suuuuper-close macro shots like these - and certainly not on the actual part, in real life, underneath the model - but it does give a sort of sense of how the part was actually made.

Also: gorgeous job, Gabor. :o

[chek]

Really nice clean precise work on that missile, it looks the biz!

Picking up on MoFo's comment that the photos are larger than life, I couldn't help noticing that your decal line of rivets around the exhaust circumference look much finer and to scale.

Perhaps a decal overlay of those complex patterns for the fins, if done as finely as yours, might be a better way to go than the heavier moulded ones?