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1/48 AMK MiG-31B/BS Foxhound, my first venture in this scale!


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So, it seems I lost the whole thread with the recent database corruption problem the ARC encountered. A time to repost everything then!

 

Yes, where was I. I've enjoyed building the gear bays. Everything went in easily and the multi part construction makes it easy to add details and paint them accurately. The gear bays look quite nice even as OOB but I ended up making them busier by adding several electric, hydraulic and fuel lines. After some careful detail painting now they need a coat of flat spray. 

C2FSxWM.jpg

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Edited by janman
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The landing gears were another story. Due to some mailing issues many axles and pins were broken so I had to resort to metal wire fixes as reinforcements and axles. The parts on my kit had also quite a lot of cleaning especially on mold seams, but some flash too.

 

Problems arose also from some bent parts (this can't be from harsh mail handling?), mainly L39&40 and MLG's inner reinforcements L11&12. They were bent quite heavily and so symmetrically that I thought they were supposed to be like that! Since the landing gears are quite complicated multi part constructions, they inevitably seem rather fiddly and lot of cleaning was ahead also after glueing especially when I had to force the bent L11&12 inside the main gear halves. On stressed areas I used CA glue, although many have used epoxy. 

 

Here are the MLGs  primed with most of the scratched hydraulic lines in place. Now some detail painting ahead.

 

9zxfvhj.jpg

 

 

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The tires are composed of two halves. Unfortunately the inner mating surface (against the rim) is on a higher level than the tread side. I really didn't notice or expect this since on, say, most Hase kits you just line up and throw the halves together with minimal sanding afterwards. Now there was s noticeable gap running along the tread which had to be filled in.

 

I'm going OOB with this kit so I struggled on without AM resin stuff with nice tread and side wall pattern. Instead I took my Tamiya scriber and manually made some grooves on the tires. Just take a steady grip on the scriber and place it against a table and turn the tire with your other hand. By using spacers of different thickness under the scriber head you'll be able to neatly make several parallel grooves.

Ova8poi.jpg

 

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The huge Soloviev engines and the main gear bay/engine intake assemblies are now installed into the lower fuselage part. Although I had read Sebastijan's excellent WIP from his blog (very valuable information there), I had missed the part where he was at this stage. Thus a lot of cursing was involved when I tried to drop the intake/bay assemblies into place. As far as I remember his advice was to carve out some plastic from the front of the lower fuselage (or from the intakes, can't really recall). I noticed in my case you just needed the right angle and some precise movements in order to get them in smoothly. And very smoothly they finally went!

 

After closing the fuselage no engine details will be seen. Despite of this I gave the engines some colour - because they are there and they look quite nice. I also had this idea that I *might* open up some panel on top of the rear fuselage. This would of course involve some further detailing at this location. Who knows...

 

NqCEiVk.jpg

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20 minutes ago, Aigore said:

Am I reading janman and 1/48 in the same sentence???????? The end is near!

Given the mindsets of leaders of certain superpowers and the menacing climate change, the end IS near! 😄

 

But I still do have time for this big kit, especially when it's a gift from Sebastijan. 🙂 Of course I had to give it a go. 

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Hmm, if it was a gift from Seb, then it was probably technically a gift from me which was in turn, a gift from AMK. 😄 If so, should be fairly low serial number on the inside of the lid. 😉 My AMK MiG-31BM serial number 1 is safe and sound...

 

Excellent job so far! The intake/landing gear bay/engine assembly is a work of art imho, but it requires tiny bit of patience. The fit for those parts is perfect, meaning that atleast in my case one had to be careful and remove primer/paint on the edges where one glues the parts. If one does that, it will click away with no issues. 🙂 The wheels are by far the weakest part in the kit, you did excellent job giving them some extra detail. Otherwise Eduard resin wheels are excellent and worth every penny imho.👍

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Whoever the original source, but I'm very glad and grateful to be the final recipient of this gorgeous kit! 

 

Oh, and about the serial number. Since on the first incarnation of the WIP thread (which was lost into bit universe) Sebastijan mentioned about his being like another kit altogether when hearing about my problems,  it made me want to check the serial. Forgot it... Still have. Just thought if the very early numbers could have some teething problems.

 

EDIT: This particular kit isn't the one from AMK's initial batch. I begun to doubt your words Anton since I remembered the first ones were BM/BSM versions and that Seb already built. The serial nr. of my kit is 01472.

 

Today I attached the wings with the upper fuselage. Went together nicely although the underside of the LERXes needs some filler. The chute container on the other hand had a pretty bad fit and even after careful dry-fitting needed quite a lot of sanding and some filling.

 

The tires are clearly a letdown. If I'm on the right mood when I'll visit my LHS, I still might replace them with Eduard ones because that will resolve the mudguard issue at the same time. I'm actually working with the mudguards but I'm not sure if my detail work will pay off in the end.

Edited by janman
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Some preliminary work with the cockpit. The instrument and the side panels are very crisply molded and look beautiful. I see absolutely no reason for AM here - unless you're a sloppy painter and prefer coloured PE parts.

 

The two biggest letdowns are the lower cockpit walls which are devoid of any detail and the lump-like throttle quadrants, which are a real shame on a kit like this. They should've been cast as separate parts.

 

I  could have scratch built the whole quadrants, but I just took a Tamiya design knife with a new blade and carved out a more pronounced arm for the levers and also altered the handle parts with some small plastic rod to get them into a right angle. Another set of levers was added in front of the throttles and some details made of styrene for the walls, flight document holders being one example.

 

bVTg1aG.jpg

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Janman, is there any way you could show us some more clearly defined pictures of the work you did with the throttles? I literally just nabbed one of these kits today and would like to see the finer details others have done on their builds.

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Whiskey, sorry about the bad photo. It doesn't really show anything. But if you have the kit, you'll instantly see how the whole thing is just a two dimensional lump and the handle part doesn't have the kink in the middle. With some reference photos it is easy to see how to alter it.

 

Just scroll down a bit:

https://www.vitalykuzmin.net/Military/790IAP/i-97Jp3Jh#

 

I'll post better pics once I'll finish them. This is just a raw version.

Edited by janman
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21 minutes ago, Aigore said:

Great work, mate!

I have one in the works as well and I managed to screw something up so the engine nozzles won't fit 😞

 

Oh, what could that be? And you mean the ones inside the engines with flame holders? Or  the "final" section, visible ouside?

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2 hours ago, Aigore said:

The final section... something went wrong with the fins... 

 

Crap. I feel your pain. Just proves this is not as easy kit as it appears.

 

Just reminds me of the recent Tamiya 1/48 Tiger I finished. Despite of it being a Tamiya kit, I still managed to put the gun and it's mantlet upside down and realized it only when I was starting to paint the whole thing... "Hmm... Every Tiger in this book has it's mantlet machine gun on the opposite side when compared to mine" Dang...

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On 11/8/2019 at 2:32 PM, janman said:

 

Crap. I feel your pain. Just proves this is not as easy kit as it appears.

 

Just reminds me of the recent Tamiya 1/48 Tiger I finished. Despite of it being a Tamiya kit, I still managed to put the gun and it's mantlet upside down and realized it only when I was starting to paint the whole thing... "Hmm... Every Tiger in this book has it's mantlet machine gun on the opposite side when compared to mine" Dang...

HAHAHAHAAHAHA..... the mistakes we make

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On 11/8/2019 at 9:01 AM, Aigore said:

Great work, mate!

I have one in the works as well and I managed to screw something up so the engine nozzles won't fit 😞

 

 

Just a week ago, I've read about this in one of FB groups by another modeller. Supposedly he did not turn the engines the correct way and couldn't install exhaust nozzles as a consequence. There are some slots at the back of the engines that have to be place correctly. Below is a photo of his problem.

 

Jan, you're progressing really nicely!

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Hmm... Makes sense, although I found the slots being fairly well defined and if one follows the instructions and keeps turning the engine at the location it's meant to reside, the engine almost locks on when it hits that slot. Then again, we seem to miss even some very obvious things when building models...

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The pit. 

 

For the colour I used AK's "Russian cockpit turquoise" which works fairly well. The photos are taken in natural light - which we don't have much here in the North in mid-November.

 

Decals are provided for every single panel in the cockpit and they are quite accurate and fit almost perfectly. I'm against decals as instrument panels especially when we have such well defined and crisp details in the pit. On the other hand, it's impossible to paint the dials as well as they are presented in the decals so I opted for a hybrid technique. After major colours I picked up most details, switches and knobs with a tooth pick and a thin brush but also used some dry brushing. Most dials and certain indicators received individually cut decals (or in a group of two or three if feasible), which I sunk in their place with a heavy use of softtener. Now they just need some future as lenses. The radar display still lacks its traditional green colour.

 

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The cockpit still needs some slight weathering for the floor - and maybe some pink sealant. The brown leather toe straps for the pedals are a scratched item.

 

mXjLnpr.jpg

 

A better look at the modified throttle quadrants. Now there's clearly two levers side by side with a different angle for right one. The handle parts probably need to be more dirty.

 

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The pilots control stick really needs the brake lever which I made from some scrap PE metal. 

 

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The seats look quite good for my eyes so I went with kit seats - just like I planned in this OOB build. They are still in progress and will benefit from the PE harnesses that came with the kit.

 

8Uw8Jex.jpg

 

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But not so blue in reality, I must add.

1 hour ago, Whiskey said:

Ohhhhh sooo blllluuueeee. I've heard nothing but good things about that cockpit paint set, looks like I'll have to get it for my Foxhound.

 

Edited by janman
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Janman which aircraft are you looking to depict? Just curious.

 

I'm thinking about seeing if I can trade my B/BS for a BM/BSM as I think I want a more modern version of the Foxhound. Maybe try and model a MiG-31K if it's possible.

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56 minutes ago, Whiskey said:

Janman which aircraft are you looking to depict? Just curious.

 

I'll probably do a B since the kit sheet includes one (the one with blue bort nr., 72?). I want an earlier example. I actually would have preferred a Soviet bird but that would mean more work. 

 

I had some fit problems with the wings - still have. The lower part of the wing just goes too deep inside the top part and creates a rather nasty step both near the wing tip and at the LERX. 

4enNMgh.jpg

 

Ca2rJ0R.jpg

 

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6 hours ago, Mstor said:

Excellent paint work on the cockpit. You have a steady hand.

Thank you for your comments.

 

Here even a less steady hand works just fine since the pink "hermetika" sealant was usually applied very roughly. The pattern on the floor seems to be fairly common if one wants to do this on their model.

 

I also added the red lever for the pilot's IP.

 

lNfgPLN.jpg

 

 

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