MiG mania

[Thadeus]

Hi there!

 

So after my previous two projects, I've been wanting both something Polish, and something MiGgy. I was considering a MiG-21 multibuild, or the MiG-29's.

Well. I kind of went both ways, starting three MiG-21's. I did forget to take some decent pictures, so I might post them here. They're 90% painted too, so I guess no real point of doing a WIP. I'll be done in a month or so (probably).

But I still have a chance to do a -29 WIP. It fits very nice with my previous Hornet build. Double engined, twin tailed, canted outwards, highly manouverable, lousy range without fuel tanks - apparently the MiG-29 is actually an F/A-18.

 

So the idea begins with a huge dissapointment. Yes, I'm going to build an Italeri kit. If You ever read my thread on any Italeri kit, I have a hard time not badmouthing something about it. And while I love the Italeri MiG-29A kit the current boxing is a massive 'almost there' in my book.

I know. I'm Polish so I'm biased. But just look at that boxart. It's just so lovelly. Arguably my second most favourite Italeri boxart EVER.

 

 

It's just the decals. They are not correct in colour. That's why it's 'almost there'. The light gray looks great, perhaps a tiny bit off. But the darker gray on the fuselage badge is way off.

Perhaps it'll be better once applied, but so far all the builds I've seen looked off. When I first saw this it broke my heart a bit. They did a great job in selecting an attractive scheme and drawing it very nicelly. I got two kits, just to be sure it wasn't a misprint. It wasn't. Ah. Well. Luckilly I have a few other MiG-29 decal sheets.

 

 

Here's on top of my F-16A painted with too light 36118 from Gunze.

 

 

So what is the other kit? It's Italeri MiG-29 Fulcrum C. Oh, wait. No. It's actually the ICM MiG-29 9-13.

 

 

Some nice decals in that kit as well. I wonder how will they look on the model.

 

 

Both kits actually look quite similar in detail and in overall appearance.

 

 

[Thadeus]

Sorry, I had some error and couldn't post the entire part of my first post.

 

where was I? Oh. Models.

Well, the ICM kit is very similar to the Italeri kit. Not quite 100% the same, but a lot of parts could be made interchangable, such as the wings, vertical stabilators and intakes. Probably the clear parts too.

 

 

Or even top to bottom halves of fuselage. Wonderfull. Although, really You can see the ICM seems to be like 1 - 2 mm shorter.

 

 

ICM does have nicer panel lines. More accurate, sharper, thinner.

 

 

And the vertical stabilators are moulded with the chaff/flare dispensers integral. Saves a lot of filling. Italeri used to have an MiG-29 UB which doesn't have these dispensers installed so this kind of makes sense.

 

 

One thing I like about Italeri (and I don't say these things often) is how Italeri modifies their mouldings from time to time. In MiG-29 they added new exhaust nozzles. And they do look quite nice. Left ones are new Italeri parts, middle old Italeri parts (also in the box) and to the right ICM parts.

 

 

ICM gives a pretty nice weapon sprue. Fuel tanks are very nice addition, especially the middle one. Shame they don't give You second pair of R-73's, as a mixed load of three different missiles is impossible in real life (as ar as I know). Apparently the weapon computer can't handle three types of missiles.

 

 

Cockpits are almost the same. The ICM (darker one) is a bit wider, and it sits better in the fuselage.  The Italeri seat, while extremelly basic feels a little less generic, and more accurate to the real K-36 seat.

 

First order of bussines is filling the auxilary intakes. They are spring loaded and are usually all closed when on the ground, unless all of the springs fail. Not a lot of work, but it really pays off.

 

 

Im quite advanced in the build, so I'll have to play catch up, but I suppose there still is time for a bit of a WIP.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

[Thadeus]

The upper intakes take two or three filling sessions to remove all most of the imperfections. But they look very nice once done. Shame I can't scribe a straight line. In my defense, Humbroll putty, which is my putty of choice, isn't the best one to scribe lines in.

ICM (note the panel lines on the kit in comparison to the Italeri)

 

Italeri.

 

Cockpits I decided on painting two different colours. The ICM got Vallejo RLM 78 (not 76, as it probably should be), and Italeri got Pactra 36375. Shame neither of the kits provide You with HUD.

ICM (there are actually nice decals in the kit. I just decided to go the inaccurate kit parts).

Italeri

 

 

I added the strenghthening ribs on the Italeri fuselage. ICM has them scribed which would be nice. I just figured it would be an easier way out. Fitting the chaff pods was even harder with the strips of plastic. It will come back later to bite me. Just wait an see.

 

 

Both kits require some work on the underside blending the intake parts together. I find ICM needs less. OTOH, the ICM intake shutters don't fit and should be fitted before assembly of the two halves of the intakes. Fitting them later is a "bit" problematic.

 

 

 

 

 

[Thadeus]

One thing I dislike about Italeri MiG-29's is the windscreen. There really isn't much to do here, as I don't know if there is a replacement available. It's too small, the outline is incorrect and it spoils a bit the look of the MiG-29. I have a quick fix as I sand away the lower frame and make it seem a little bit bigger. You can almost see the outline of the lower frame as moulded by Italeri. 

 

 

Once I sanded all the seams, masked the clear parts it was time for a paintjob. I have decided on using Tamiya light royal gray for the ICM MiG. But once applied and dry It was way too beige for me. I was painting it alongside another project of three MiG-21's. Here's a shot with my previous Italeri MiG-29 painted with royal gray and a MiG-21 painted with 36495 from Gunze.

 

 

After a repaint, I feel it is more accurate. i just hope the light gray on the ICM decals won't blend with my base paint.

 

 

So, a funny story. Alongside this project I'm doing both three MiG-21's and a Draken. And an J-11 from Trumpeter. There was a lot of confusion in the paint schemes, as the three MiG's I've chosen were supposed to be totally different schemes (one Syrian, one Polish and one Finnish) but the Draken and the Finnish MiG-21's were supposed to be similar. Doing more research I found out they are absoluttelly different schemes other than being painted unusual green, weird colour for the spots and gray for the undersides. Same thing goes for the Italeri MiG-29. I initially thought I had the paints covered. I bought two paints from the Vallejo MiG-29 set for the main camo and I was happy camper. I was going for the early "standard" scheme of gray-green over gray. The thing is, both the Draken and Italeri MiG-29 were supposed to be painted with "neutral gray". The kit instruction specified H53 for the Draken undersides, which I thought would be much too dark, so I chose the 36270 as a much lighter alternative. It might've gone with a little darker paint. Luckilly, nothing in nature dissapears, as we say in my neck of the woods, and I painted the Italeri MiG in a too dark colour. Yea. This doesn't look right. I might add a silver mist over it and use it as a Have Glass test paint.

 

 

I might have switched the colours around.

 

 

So, being a genious that I am, I decided I don't want to paint over Vallejo, as I've had a few instances where I lifted or scratched the paint. I decided to strip it with Wamod acrylic paint removed. It wasn't the best decision, frankly I don't even consider it a "good" decision, though the result was pretty nice. Most of the paint was gone.

 

 

 

But apparently, the remover removed also all the Tamiya white putty, and a little bit of Humbroll putty from the joints. Well done Thaddeus👍

 

 

I reapplied most of the putty, except for the grilles, where I figured I'll leave the effect, as it kind of looked ok from the distance (I was fed up). It still looks a little dark compared to the ICM MiG, but I'm sticking with it.

 

 

And voila! My very first early schemed Polish AF MiG got its paint. The green is Vallejo Model Air 71.340 with a tiny drop of white. I should've added more, but I'm happy with it.

 

 

And both of the models with all the bits painted. This is how they looked as of yesterday morning. Luckilly, I'm not out of the woods yet. For a quick relaxing build it seems these two MiG-29's are going to fight me for a while yey.

 

 

Oh, and a quick shot of these other models I'm building. Yes. I really confused the Draken scheme with Finnish MiG-21 scheme.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by. Have a great day!

 

 

[lgl007]

Hey Thadeus... great work on the Migs.  Lots of work on them but well worth it in the end 🙂  After all, that's part of the fun for most of us...

Cheers!

 

-Greg

[Thadeus]

Thanks Greg. That's exactly what I keep saying to myself. Besides. I absolutelly hate not finishing a model. It might be bad, back-of-the-lowest-dirtiest-shelf kind of a model, but I'll get it done. In the end I might eventually learn something.

 

On the subject of learning. I'm on the market for a new gloss coat. I'm almost set on the Gunze H30, as I got some nice result with it. In january I was experimenting with Vallejo clear coats, as I had some pretty good experience with Vallejo Model Air range. The first results were very good. The gloss came out amazing, although it remained sticky for a long time. I thinned it down with Tamiya X-20 thinner. This time I tried thinning it down with water - apparently this is how it should be done. First spray was great, but I did a very heavy coat and I was afraid I'd loose all the panel line detail.

 

So after adjusting air pressure and adding a bit more thinner, I tried it on the piece of cardboard. Still came out pretty nice. Very smooth. That's the J-11 sprue btw.

 

 

So I went on spraying it on the J-11. First the stabs. Yea. Almost passable. It came out nicer on the tail, as You can see. A little bit of smoothing will sort it out.

 

 

And on the wings. Still not bad. Although the top coat was super smooth before the gloss coat. No biggie. I'll add a second coat after all three jets are gloss coated. The bottom is a bit more rough. On to the ICM MiG.

 

 

Yea. I should've seen it coming. I tried adding a second coat a while after the first one. On the bottom I had some problems. But I figured I have it covered. The second coat blended with the first one as it was still a bit wet and it looks ok-ish. Far cry from either the Tamiya X-22 or the Gunze H30, but ok-ish. A little polishing will do.

 

 

The solution seemed simple, go back to a more heavy coat. I really need the topside to be smooth. Oh... not good.

Very not good.

 

At this stage I was thankfull I'm Polish, as I don't know if there is a single better word in other languages that describe how i felt, how it looked, and still being a general commentary on my situation. Noted. No more heavy coats. I finished spraying the rest of the model with the fins coming out ok (frankly, they came out stellar compared to this).

It feels like the surface tension of water prevented the clear coat from spraying evenly.

 

 

A smart person would walk away now. But I cleaned my airbrush and put some Vallejo clear thinned with X-22. I got a medicore result on the third model.

 

 

So. A smart person would take a few days to cool off. But this morning I went to town with sanding paper. Wet sanding and polishing I managed to smooth out most of this atrocity. I still have a bit to do - mostly on the tailplanes. But the worst part is done.

 

Still looks a little bad, but this time I really have to try to capture it at a bad angle. But I hope under a new gloss coat it'll look better. Oh. Yea. I'll try the Vallejo clear again. A smart person probably wouldn't.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[lgl007]

Hey Thadeus... stick with Gunze gloss, I find it even far superior to Tamiya.  I recently went back to Tamiya because I couldn't get Gunze's locally but once again my local hobby shop has finally been able to stock it regularly and I'll go back to Gunze gloss and flats.  I like to support my local shops by buying everything locally and not online... I'm always afraid one day that is all we'll be able to do (buy online)... sadly.  I still love browsing and the chit chat at the LHS 🙂

 

BTW, I Polish as well (actually born and raised till age 9 in Poland) and it must be a 'Polish' thing to just keep at it no matter the cost ... LOL, I do the same thing you do... I just can't let 'sleeping dogs lie' and I'm too quick to try and fix things only to make things worse 😞 

 

Still, it all looks fixable and I'm sure it'll be fantastic when done 🙂

 

Cheers!

 

-Greg

[RichB63]

Great looking MiG!

[Thadeus]

On 5/3/2023 at 10:37 PM, lgl007 said:

Hey Thadeus... stick with Gunze gloss, I find it even far superior to Tamiya.  I recently went back to Tamiya because I couldn't get Gunze's locally but once again my local hobby shop has finally been able to stock it regularly and I'll go back to Gunze gloss and flats.  I like to support my local shops by buying everything locally and not online... I'm always afraid one day that is all we'll be able to do (buy online)... sadly.  I still love browsing and the chit chat at the LHS 🙂

 

BTW, I Polish as well (actually born and raised till age 9 in Poland) and it must be a 'Polish' thing to just keep at it no matter the cost ... LOL, I do the same thing you do... I just can't let 'sleeping dogs lie' and I'm too quick to try and fix things only to make things worse 😞 

 

Still, it all looks fixable and I'm sure it'll be fantastic when done 🙂

 

Cheers!

 

-Greg

 

I'll probably stick with Gunze and Tamiya. But I was looking for a quick drying clear. My previous Model Master Acryl clear was dry within a minute, or less. It required two or three coats for a nice glossy finish, but still I was spraying another layer just after finishing the previous one. Luckilly, I can get both Gunze, Tamiya and Vallejo in my LHS. So that's a plus.

As for the stubborness I guess it might be one of our national traits. There are quite a few traits 😉 It's a nice heritage (I hope, for me it's the only one I have 😉  ). Although I have a lot of family abroad.

 

8 minutes ago, RichB63 said:

Great looking MiG!

 

Thanks Rich!

 

So some update! I was lazy this weekend and I just spent it wet sanding and polishing the rougher parts of the clear coat and re-applying clear. I managed to sand through a bit of paint, luckilly mostly where I used a regular brush, and the base paint was much thicker (antennae, silver leading edges of the horizontal stabilizers). BTW. Vallejo Air chrome is just amazing. Almost invisible paint flakes. Although I'd call it more like aluminium paint, not as glossy as chrome. I gotta try out some other metallic paints from them.

 

Weird thing, this wing is in no better shape than when I started. The panel line going chordwise is almost entirelly filled with clear paint apparently, as I can no longer feel it under the finger. You can also see the paint sanded on the horizontal stab. I'm almost out of the woods here. I could try to get away with uneven coat with cutting off all or most of the clear film. Digital scheme decals have a lot of it. But the decals migh bend or fold on themselves.

 

 

Right wing I'm not touching anymore. It's not 100% even, but there are no large holes in the clear. I might have to polish a bit the top of the fuselage too. Under a finger it feels ok, though. Oh, I've sanded through the clear coat and final light gray coat right to the previous Tamiya paint - bottom of the inner leading edge flap. Good choice on the colour change!

 

Another tiny problem here. The scheme provided by ICM is quite nice. The decal sheet provides three styles of bort numbers - awesome. But I'm having extremelly hard time tracking down the real aircraft. Understandably, there are very few current photographs of Ukrainian MiG-29's, so I'll probably just go with ICM scheme as it looks attractive and use the shown bort number. Or the blue 02, it looks nice.

 

 

I'm currently rethinking the Polish MiG too. I really like my projects to have a passing theme from one to another. It's a game of sorts. You know, build a Phantom from Vietnam war era, then build a MiG-21 from the same era, stuff like that. I was going to buil a pretty much freshly delivered MIG, no additional commemorative insignia, as I've heard some fun stories from that time period. But recently Special Hobby came out with French Mirage III boxing, with markings from Cigognes sqn, and the same MiG I was hoping to build wore small badge of that unit during Mirage 2000's visit to Poland in 1994. Good enogh for a passing theme, eh? But by that time the scheme changed a bit. So I might have to repaint the jet. There's very little link between the MiG-29 and Mirage III (luckilly I could link it to my other builds of three MiG-21's and a Draken - more or less same era, single engined, there's a delta wing in there too). Ah, well decicions. I know what lazy me would do 😉

 

Thanks for stopping by! 

 

 

[Thadeus]

Hi there.

 

So I took some time to start decalling proces. From a few online builds of this kit it seems the decals are a little small in few places. I was quite afraid the light gray would blend with the base camo. Some people use white or very light gray, while gunze H338 seems a bit blueish. And after the gloss coat it darkened a bit. I decided it would be wise to put on two or three decals in a few different places to check how it goes, so if anything goes wrong I could jus repaint these areas with minimal damage. I'm pleased to report decals aren't blending in. This is the worst angle, where the colours blend the most. The shine does it's job too.

 

 

A little bolder move. Still not bad.

 

And *poof* all the digital stuff is on. The worst part was the large decal just behind the canopy up to the center of the fuselage. I cut it up in two - front and back and aligned it a little to the left side, then removed the dark gray portion of the decal on the spine rectangular antennae. It didn't come out too good. I might repaint this area later. I'll have to add a little paint to the decal behind the gun, and to the two on the other side. Some tiny touch ups are required too. Mostly by the edges of the wing or fins. But nothing major. All in all, this was a very good process. The decals themselves are awesome. Super thin, don't tear easilly and go in the panel lines with minimal amount of Micro Sol. They conform easilly to the curves, and hence they show all the imperfections of my paintjob. Or my clear coat. I should've put more effort in polishing the surface.

 

 

Next up - stencils. Or repainting the Polish MiG? I'm not sure yet.

[lgl007]

That digi-camo turned out really nice!  That's going to be a beautiful bird when you're done with her 🙂

 

-Greg

[Thadeus]

Ok, so after a few hours, the ICM model is fully decalled.

I have also made several touch ups where the decals wouldn't meet the edge of the wing, or fuselage. The colours I tried to apply were a bit off so they show a bit, such as on the dark pixel just aft of the gun around the ECM, or by the upper intakes.

 

And during all the handling I managed to bend the pitot tube. It's actually a huge success, since I broke the tube on the Italeri bird.

 

 

Speaking of the Italeri MiG. I did a quick repaint to update the scheme. I hope once I'm done, the green will come back to this colour, rather than stay so dark.

 

 

Oh. And I funked up the clear coat. AGAIN! This time it's too matt. And theres a orange peel effect on the flap. Not that much, and just a bit sanding managed to even it out. But still I guess there will be no more Vallejo clear for me.

 

 

Did somebody say decals? I was going to mix the Techmod sheet I have with the markings with the Italeri ones. But Techmod decals are just so much better. Very thin, super fine lettering. The downside is they're barelly visible. Notice the difference in colour and size of the checkerboards.

 

 

You know what. I think I put on the wrong checkerboards. Oh man. I think they should've been the ones with cut corners (number 2, not 1). I just didn't pay enough attention. I'll re-check and if I have to I'll remove decals or just apply them over. I should've noticed how they are arranged on the decal sheet. In 1994 Polish checkerboards were still arranged with red square in the top left position on some planes. Officially, in 1993, they were "rotated" 90 degrees, so the left uppermost square would be white.

Notice the Techmod stencils. So thin, so delicate.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week.

[Thadeus]

Huh, wierd thing. Almost every time I plan on some action the next weekend I don't have the willpower to execute it.

So I finally made some real progress in my ongoing projects.

 

First thing, I managed to finish two of the three MiG-21's. The easiest ones. The Syrian was built from KP kit. Pretty good kit for a short run. Not too complicated, super well detailed. The Finnish Bis is from Zvezda kit. ummm... It was a super quick build. Aobut 10 work hours. And it has some pretty thin wings.

 

 

As for the MiG-29's? Well. I've built a few MiG-29's over the years, most of which are gone now. I've got three left. After I completed that project I found out, there was something off with the Trumpeter MiG-29 stance. See, this is how it looks:

 

 

Compared to Zvezda:

 

 

And Italeri:

 

 

For the Italeri kit I had to modify the main gear legs, as the stock ones don't have enouth of the angle, resulting in the tail being tto high. Unfortunatly I didn't take the picture from same angle as the previous ones, so it doesn't show the height of the model the same way as these previous three.

 

 

After some modifications to the gear legs I did manage to finish the build though.

 

 

Shame the new exhaust are too long. And require a bit of work.

 

 

 

All I need now is to finish the second MiG-29, a third MiG-21, and a J-11B.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

[lgl007]

Great work on the older Migs... sorry to hear the Mig-29 has been giving you so many issues, but still it looks really good 🙂

-Greg

[Tony Oliver]

Nice stuff. So what was the exact base grey used  for the ghost digi cam mig-29?

[Thadeus]

On 6/12/2023 at 2:01 PM, lgl007 said:

Great work on the older Migs... sorry to hear the Mig-29 has been giving you so many issues, but still it looks really good 🙂

-Greg

 

Thanks! Isn't that the best part of modelling? Making artificial problems and finding solutions for them? Or was that something else? 😉 Funny thing, after all this trouble with Vallejo clears, the matt coat was wonderfull. Took twice as long to apply than Gunze, but the effect seems a bit better. More matt.

And, since I very often use my own threads for reference when I build another model, I usually focus on trouble areas. I used to write notes for that but I kept loosing them.

 

On 6/12/2023 at 7:46 PM, Tony Oliver said:

Nice stuff. So what was the exact base grey used  for the ghost digi cam mig-29?

 

Thanks! The exact colour is H-338 with perhaps a drop of white per half an airbrush tank. I feel it came out differently on two models painted with it. On the MiG-21 it has a little bit blueish tint, but on the MiG-29 it came out ok.

[Thadeus]

So I guess I can call this entire project complete.

 

The last one is first. The J-11B.

 

 

 

Second, the J-35.

 

 

The Fishbed:

 

 

And finally, the MiG-29.

 

Hopefully, sometime this week I'll manage to shoot some half decent shots of the bunch. First though, I'll see how many mistakes I've made on each of them. And I bet there are quite a few. The second half of the year will probably be less fruitfull, though with the J-11 complete, I managed to finish my fourteenth model of this year. That's quite the success for me, especially considering all the other stuff happening in life...

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[lgl007]

Beautiful each and every one!

 

Greg