Alex

Thanks!

Step 1 on painting the airline color scheme. I made a Silhouette mask for the top of the gray undersides to make sure to capture the subtle curve near the nose. Owing to the deep panel line grooves in the model, I had to use a fresh scalpel blade to cut the masking film each place that it crossed a groove, then burnish it down in with a fingernail and cover the cut with masking fluid. This resulted in a very crisp line without paint blowing up into the panel lines grooves: But it's a preview of a lot of fiddly work going forward to get the rest of the paint to look equally crisp. Masks for the red stripes: Initial placement on the fuselage Dealing with the aft part Still lots more to do before I can start airbrushing red paint...

Thanks Kev! I'm tempted to now turn it into a Star Wars rocket sled, but I'm going to hold off at least for a while....

Closing the books on this one with some RFI shots. In a sort of curious modeling synchronicity that seems to be happening a lot lately, I just got an email from KitLinx today indicating that the AM stuff I ordered for my Hasegawa F-86F has shipped out. So Korean War subject 2.0 may not be too far behind. I'll need to finish painting my TriStar and see how the GB project progresses first...

Wing fit looks good - but you should expect this level of accuracy from a modern Hasegawa or especially Tamiya kit. I can point you to all KINDS of short-run warbird kits from Special Hobby, A-Model, ICM, etc if you would like a greater challenge when it comes to wing fit...

That's an amazing LG strut. The debris catcher looks like it was worth the 90 minutes! Are the light blue fixtures in the wheel bay hydraulic fittings/valves/something of that nature? Do they need more lines plumbed to them?

Seriously. How do you get "the bottom stripe is pink" from this?

Gotta love those 6x2 carbs! Looking forward to seeing this beast completed.

So I finally got my decals (the right ones this time) in from Nazca. They look like this: That's a scan of the sheets, because I think I'm going to do a lot of this via paint, for a few reasons. 1. I just can't see getting that big red vertical stabilizer to look half decent via giant decals, versus what I can do by painting it. 2. The lower part of the cheat line stripes is PINK on this sheet, whereas every photo I've seen of these actual planes has both stripes the same deep red. So the scans of the decals will be used to cut precise masks for the sunburst logo (white) on the tail, the curves of the cheat lines as they approach the nose, and the "AeroPeru" lettering (I think it's plenty big enough to paint crisply if I'm careful. I will use the decals themselves for the smaller bits like the Nazca line logo (interesting that the decal company took its logo from this era of AeroPeru), the "TriStar" lettering, etc. I'll use the cockpit and cabin window decals from the kit (Delta) sheet, and I'm pretty sure I'm going to use the Delta door outlines too, even though they are (incorrect for AeroPeru) monochrome silver - the advantage is thet they are separate decals on the kit sheet. The alternative is to cut the alternating red/white outlines carefully out of the Nazca sheet and attempt to get them down cleanly over my painted cheat lines. Wanna bet on my probability of 8 for 8 success there? At any rate, with the decals in hand I can now un-shelf this WIP and try to advance it to an RFI...

Underside of the forward fuselage with decals. The instructions for the stencil sheet were maybe typical for a short-run product. Most of the callouts in the diagram did not have decal numbers next to them (a few did), and the ones that were numbered were clearly wrong when matched to the decal sheet. Fortunately the little images of the stencils on the instruction diagram were pretty clear, so it wasn't too hard (in most cases) to match it visually to the decal sheet. I guessed for sure on some of the smaller ones. The decal film on this set is quite thick. That was good in that the tiny stencils were easy to work with without destroying them (I wrecked exactly zero of them), but the roundels absolutely refuse to conform to the underlying panel lines, MicroSol or not. And they are *shiny*. I think I'm going to break with NMF convention and give this thing an overall semi-matte clear coat to kill the decal gloss and facilitate some pastel weathering. Moving along, with engine (and although you can't see them here, landing gear) installed. Per reference photos and what I've read online, no roundels on top of the wings, only underneath. The Soviets did the same, however I have seen photos of Chinese AF (PLAAF) MiG-15s with national insignia both top and bottom of the wings. Clear coat and pastel weathering next to wrap this thing up, as hoped for, by this weekend. I need to clear my workspace and brain for a few days before the next GB starts.

Great project! I love the idea of displaying it with the recovered bits of the actual aircraft. This should be amazing when complete!

Proper modeling indeed! It’s looking great - on track for a nice result.

Looks great. The dzus fasteners are very crisp.

I love the dogs hanging out on the rail car...

I find scribing to be frustrating and difficult most of the time, so I feel your pain! Couple of tricks I’ve learned: you can often start by pushing the scribing tool, rather than pulling it, to prevent wandering. a needle tool is often best for curves, especially tight ones. you can pre-scribe - if you think you are going to sand away a given line, deepen it first, so there’s still something there to follow after sanding. once you are done, wick a little bit of Tamiya extra-thin into the newly scribed groove to smooth it out. Good luck!

Thanks! It turned out better than I was expecting it to.

This is about it for the MiG's engine. Next up I need to smooth the surface of the fuselage a bit ahead of decals, without wrecking its appearance. I'm going to try out (on a spot on the underside first to make sure it's OK) a quick wet polish with 12000 grit polishing cloth followed by a rub-down with some old T-shirt fabric.

Did the very straightforward red markings on the nose and vertical stab. I read somewhere that these red markings came about as a field expedient very shortly after the F-86 was deployed to NK and there were a couple of friendly-fire incidents where a MiG pilot mistook one of his comrades (they were all Soviets at the beginning) for a Sabre. Then got back to the VK-1. First joined the main compressor part to the burners and exhaust section. Then got started on some of the plumbing that runs between those two sections. This is all sort of semi-accurate and semi-gizmology depending on how much I can see in photos (and the photos on the web themselves differ from each other by a fair amount, as you would expect for a powerplant that was constructed in multiple different countries over the course of quite a few years. The engine joined up to the firewall. Some of those free wires will get joined up to boxes on the engine mounts, which will go on next.

Made some more progress on weathering the aft end of the engine And I have decals! I am going to do the top one (#723) It's great that this set includes stencils, which are completely absent from the Tamiya decal sheet. Also plenty of extra KPAAF roundels, so I will be able to use them on my Tu-2S when I get to that.

A little bit of progress here. Been busy with lots of other things. I added some detail to the forward part of the engine. Just trying to emulate some of the stuff I can see in (inevitably) blurry photos of the real thing. Here it is primed. There are a bunch more hoses that need to get added after this part is painted, when other peripheral parts go on and when it is integrated with the firewall and engine mounts. Trying to add some heat discoloration to the burners and the exhaust tube. I will kill all the shine with clear flat and add more depth with pastels, but first this needs to dry thoroughly. That's all for now. I feel like this is going really slowly because I'm having to ponder and guess a lot based on poor photos (some detailed technical drawings would help a bunch), and (unlike piston engines) I've never worked on a jet engine, so I don't have any feel for how it is supposed to look/work.

Nice work on that paint! The marbled undercoat is really working well for you.

I bet Eduard will still come up with some reason to make an extra PE set for it...

Wow. I just read the in-box review of this kit on Britmodeler. Wow. I’m not really even a jet guy, or a modern military subjects guy, and still I want this kit. Just the challenge of assembling it to the standard it appears to demand seems like a worthwhile thing to devote half a year to...

Cool - what brand are you using?

The epoxy wire trick is awesome. Thanks a bunch for that. Going to get started practicing that right away. How thin are you able to get these without them falling apart when you try to work with them?