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1:48 Eduard Mig-21SM in 812th UAP, Kharkov Academy colors.


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Hello everybody!  First build thread, here goes. 

 

After much consideration, I picked up Eduard's Mig21-MF ProfiPack for my next build.   Not going crazy with aftermarket parts, but I will get the Masters pitot tube and static wicks, and maybe resin wheels and weapons if I see fit... but I'll leave that decision for later.    Maybe at some point I'll even build another variant with all of the resin goodies. 

 

This will be built up as a Mig-21SM, "yellow 127" in 812th UAP colors from the Kharkov Higher Military Academy at Kupyansk Airfield, USSR, 1991.   Basically building straight from the book.   Cant really find actual photos of this specific aircraft, and I don't really care that much.  I'm going to use other Mig-21SM/MF photos as reference for all of the details and for ideas on how to weather the thing.   As long as it looks believable, then I'm happy.  

 

First impressions of the kit are positive.  I'm liking the level of detail, and after dry-fitting all of the major parts, looks like there are no major fit issues.  

 

 

Nothing exciting to show yet.  I assembled the gearbays and then shot some primer onto the gearbays, cockpit and engine parts.   I've got the engine painted and assembled, but nothing exciting on that front.   Originally, I was going to go resin with the engine, but after dry fitting and realizing that you really cant even see the thing, I decided against it.   My only real wish here would be a more detailed flame holder right out of the box.   I understand their logic in holding back the detail for the flame holder, but still, it would be nice, as that really is the most visible engine component.

 

Just some primer, nothing exciting.   For these parts, I used Alclad II gloss black primer... mostly because I knew I needed it for the metal parts and I was too lazy to clean the airbrush to shoot Mr Surfacer 1500 on the rest of these.   I used this method for my Su-35 and it worked well, and if it works, then, well, it woks... 

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I did paint and assemble the gear bays and engine parts, I'll take some photos later.  I will be adding some scratchbuilt details to the gear bays.  More on that later. 

 

Next I hacked out the airbrakes.  From reference photos, it seems the airbrakes are retracted while parked, but are drooping ever so slightly.  I will attempt to model this, and hopefully it ends up looking good instead of looking like I just did a bad job gluing the airbrakes.  We shall see.   Dry fit looked good.   

 

Here is a picture of the hack-job.  Not sure about you guys, but this was more painful than I was expecting.  I drilled around the perimeter and then carefully removed the center, finishing off with files.  Each one took about an hour to drill, hack, file, fit, file some more, fit, file, repeat... and what do you know, I forgot to take a photo of the end result.   Still needs filling, but that will be done after I get the fuselage glued together. 

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Last night I got a shipment of paint and was able to get a base-coat onto the cockpit parts.  Tonight I plan on adding a few additional colors for detail and then assembling the cockpit.    

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Despite my best efforts, I could not get a good match to the pre-painted PE cockpit that came with the kit, but it's close enough for me.  It should blend better after some weathering, or at least I hope it will.   

 

Last night I assembled the panels and dry fitted everything else.  Still needs a few adjustments to get the PE side panels to sit right, but its getting there.   The foil pieces are my attempt at modelling the little ridge/sun shade that overhangs the panel.  Should look about right after a few adjustments and some paint.   

 

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I would love to add a few more details to the cockpit, but I cant seem to find any images of the side panels and rear bulkhead.  If anybody has a source, please share, it would be a big help. 

 

 

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Got some more done this weekend, here's an update for the 2 people paying attention.   

 

Had to scrub the "sun shade" along the top ridge of the instrument panel.  Looks like there is not much clearance between the panel and canopy, and with even just a doubled over piece of foil (which didn't really look right anyway), it was too much.   It did looked great with a quad-folded piece of kitchen foil, though.     This is definitely a big selling point for the resin cockpit, as that part has the ridge/sun shade molded in.  I'm surprised I have not seen mention of this on any of the build and review threads I read.  To me, the lack of that sun shade really sticks out, but not really a big deal. 

 

Anyway, moving on. 

 

I made a slight adjustment to the suggested assembly steps for installing the engine.  The instructions called for the installation of the engine to be done before the fuselage is glued together, but this creates a problem for filling the seam at the rear, on the inside of the fuselage. Since the engine sits so far inside, that seam would be quite noticeable.   To remedy this, I made a slight modification that allows me to install the engine after I fill the seam. 

 

You can see this detailed below.   I simply removed the forward ridge that holds the motor in the fuselage.   This allows me to insert the assembled motor through the opening where the wings-roots and gear-bays are mounted.  

 

Here, you can see a small incision.

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And here it is with the ridge removed.   This obviously needs to be done on both fuse halves. 

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Next, I put some paint on the shock-cone and then got the fuse glued together.  The fit is pretty good.  Most of the seam will be covered, which makes gluing the halves together a bit more forgiving.   However, murphy's law still prevailed, and the most difficult part of the process was the nose... the most visible part of the aircraft.  

 

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After some careful sanding, I deduced that the seam didn't need much filling at all.   I opted for trying my luck with Mr Surfacer 1500, painted on with a brush.   500 or 1000 are probably a better fit for this application... but I don't have any, and this will work, so that's that. 

 

...and here is a dry-fitting of the wings, tail, and dorsal spine.  It's starting to look like an actual airplane. 

 

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Next up is completing the gear-bays, mounting the engine, and attaching the wings, tail, and dorsal spine. 

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  • 2 months later...

I forgot I even started this thread... Whoops.   

 

I ran into a small issue while attaching the wings.  Nothing a little sanding and putty couldn't fix, but certainly makes my noob-ness stand out.  There was quite a bit of sanding required at the forward portion of the joint, and as a result, I lost some detail.  I did my best to re-scribe the lost detail, and I think that came out just OK.  Doesn't bother me, though, as it's on the bottom, and after paint and weathering, it will be barely noticeable.  

 

The air frame is complete.  All that's left is paint, landing gear, weapons, and details like pitot tubes, static wicks, antennas and other tiny details.  

 

I started painting the bottom yesterday.  In the below photos, you will see the progression through the first and second layer of paint.  One more layer and some touch-up, and on to the topside. 

 

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Edited by BaconRaygun
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Hey 👋🏻 I’m here and watching.  Great progress- the paint on the underside looks great.  I’ve built one of the Eduard MiG-21s and loved it.  The Master pitot tube is a worthy investment.  Thanks for sharing your progress!

 

Steve

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Thanks for the kind words, Steve. Definitely a fun kit.  I've thoroughly enjoyed it.  I may even attempt to build a mig-21 analog using this kit sometime in the future... if I'm feeling brave. 

 

Speaking of the master pitot tube (and static wicks); those are the only aftermarket parts that i bought for this kit.  I wanted to build this kit totally out of the box, but I just could not skip that beautiful pitot tube.  It's so prominent on this aircraft that I just couldn't hold back. 

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More progress.  Started on the camouflage scheme last night.   Before anybody asks, top-side paints are Mr. Color (per callouts in manual), bottom paint is MRP Sukhoi light blue (yes, I realize this is not a Sukhoi.  No, I don't care, its close enough for me).   Camo is being done freehand.  I don't know if the real thing had hard-edge camo or not, as I was not able to find a single reference shot of this scheme... so, I've made the executive decision to just go with a soft-edge camo look.   

 

Light blue on the underside is finished.  4 layers total.  

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First layer of green and stone down. 

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Second layer of stone down.  Second layer of green will be used to refine and sharpen the edges. 

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Onward! 

 

 

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On 7/11/2019 at 10:51 PM, BaconRaygun said:

<...> My favorite part about the mottling isn't even how it comes out... its doing the painting.  There is something strangely satisfying about it. 

 

A classic win-win situation, then. :thumbsup:

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  • 1 month later...

So..... I had some major issues that stretched this build an extra month.    I must have gotten a bad stencil sheet because the backing film was annoyingly thick.  The other sheet was fine (start, numbers, special markings) and all of that stuff went down like a dream.   

 

I did all of the stencils and they just looked, ehh, not good.  I decided to leave all of the ventral stencils since the light blue seemed to help them blend in, but everything topside was stripped.  Stripping the stencils inevitably stripped some of the paint, and in correcting all of this I lost some of the mottling work that I did.  This in turn caused some surface issues since I was not able to sand everything as smooth as I like... and the surface issues cased some minor silvering of the Begemot stencils (nothing like what was happening with the out of the box stencils). 

 

I was able to remedy the silvering and tone down the contrast of the stencils by first sealing them, carefully painting over them and then sanding back with 2000 grit.   This seems to work well because the lettering is slightly raised from the backing film, and very gentle sanding only removes the paint from the text and not the underlying backing film.  Doing this, I was able to achieve the effect I was after.  That being stencils that look like, ehh, stencils, instead if in-your-face bright contrasted text.  

 

Next, I'm gonna go heavy with the panel line wash and then touch up the model once more with the two major topside colors to try to get back some of the mottling that was lost in this salvage operation.   Once I do that, I'll add the static wicks, pitot tubes and antennae, and finish up with oil paint and clay wash for rain marks and various streaks.    

 

Here is what it looks like now after some clay-based panel line wash applied.   I'm shooting for a pretty dirty looking bird, so I am intentionally leaving plenty of residue from the panel line wash.  I was going to do some chipping, but I'm a noob, and I will reserve learning those techniques for a different build. 

 

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Thanks! 

 

Almost done.  Finished up the rails, droptank and missiles this weekend.   Had another issue with my stencils... this time, the ones at the bottom of the sheet seem to be stuck to the backing paper.   Bummer, but I'm just gonna leave those off and not worry about them.  This thing has enough stencils. 

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It's finished!  

 

I took it outside and took a few pictures with my phone.   One of these days I'm gonna borrow my buddy with his DSLR and go take some forced perspective shots at the airport.  Till then, these will have to do. 

 

There's a bit of a mistake in this build that I didn't bother correcting by the time I realized I had screwed up... lets see if any of you MiG-21 fans can spot it.   

 

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By this point, my tolerance for mosquitoes had been exhausted... so I half-assed the last few. 

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