mywifehatesmodels

Thanks for the kind words, gents! Before I went any further, I decided I needed to get the stand situation sorted out. I wanted everything to be in position before I started painting, so if I screwed it up, I could hopefully avoid removing any paint from the model. I had purchased a threaded rod and some brass tubing to cover it, along with a wood display base. Unfortunately, the brass tube doesn't quite fit (I could have sworn it would when I bought it!), so I ended up covering the threaded rod with some black hose that I had on hand. Now that the "keeper" nut was in place, I had to find the angle I wanted and drill a hole through the wood base at the appropriate angle, and... At this point, I need to finish the radio deck (not finding a lot of good references on that one yet, but I need to do some more searching), then I can get the canopy parts in line. Getting there, eventually. John

John

Absolutely love it! The detail in the dive brakes is incredible and I love the display. I'm working on an In-flight Mig 3 right now and your build is certainly inspirational. Thanks for posting! John

I finally finished the instrument panel. It's not perfect and it's not accurate, but it looks the part and is surely several steps above what I would have achieved by just painting the kit panel. Most of the plane is now glued together. I still need to add the nose intakes and do a little more seam work in a few spots. I also made a couple of plates for the rear of the radio shelf and that sloped portion at the extreme rear of the canopy area. This was much easier than dealing with the huge seam in this area. Just decided to cover it up, instead. The next thing I need to do is to figure out exactly how I'm going to mount this to the post for the "In-flight" display. I think I have it figured out, but I'll give an update on that portion, once I get there. I'm also to the portion of the build where I need to coat the windscreen and canopy parts in Future, but I'm going to have to try to eliminate those bars from the windscreen, first. Wish me luck! John

Nice fix! Nobody will ever know (except for us ). John

Excellent job, all around. I especially like the riveting. Subtle, but present. John

Beautiful Airacobra! John

Thanks, all! I think I'm to the point where I'm going to call the pilot done. I wish the face was better, especially the eyes, but I've repainted them several times. Also, the paint on the face is getting pretty thick now and it's probably time to just let it go. This did serve a purpose, however. It allowed me to get a feel for the Vallejo paints. I've pretty much sworn off aqueous acrylic paints for most of my life, but I must say that these work better than I expected them to. However, there is a learning curve to using them, just like anything else. I find that they can be used in a similar way that one would use oils, but it just feels different. I don't know how to describe it, other than that. On the plus side, you can also follow up with oils and there's no real interference between the two, if you do. That is exactly what I did. I still find the oils more comfortable to use, but that's likely only because I've been doing it a lot longer and is in no way meant to slight Vallejo. I actually like them. I just need more practice. From here, I started applying instrument decals to the backing plate I made for the instrument panel. I was lucky to find the kit decal from the Hobby Boss Sturmovik I built and cut some of of those out and have it about 60% complete, at the moment. I also did some more work on the wing root intakes and they're looking pretty good. It won't be long and I'll be putting everything together and getting ready to paint. Cheers, John

Today I was able to make some progress on the pilot. I had started by using the MRP black primer. From there, I gave the body a light coat of Tamiya Khaki. When that had dried, it was time to spray the seat and plate behind the pilot and try to "separate" the pilot from plate and determine how hard it was going to be to get into all the recesses, which are many and quite deep in spots. After this, I determined that I could actually mask between the pilot and plate, to a good extent. So, I masked it off and started to build on the colors of the pilot. I mixed another batch of paint using the Khaki with some of MRP's AMT-4, which is actually a touch on the brown side and started to build some thin layers. Once I had a solid base color, I painted the straps (Thanks for the info on the shoulder straps. Unfortunately, they are part of the pilot figure and I wasn't about to perform the surgery required to remove them. Call me lazy! ). Then I started applying oil washes, thinned with mineral spirits. At this point, I'm pretty much done with the body and the seat and am just beginning to really work on the head. I had only just started working on the hands when I took these photos. The base coat of the skin is Tamiya "Flesh". However, I noticed that it was activating the primer below and I was getting a little bit of bleed through from the black primer. Since then, I've given a base coat of Vallejo "Sunny Flesh" I believe and will likely finish out with the Vallejo flesh set I have (First trime trying it, so my fingers are crossed) and oil filters, if needed. Thanks for following! John

There are also photos showing them having been painted black. Some of them were posted earlier in this thread, so I'm sure you can see where the confusion comes from. In any case, I'll be sticking with what I have for the moment and may just swear off Russian stuff from here on. John

Masking doesn't get any better than that. Bravo! John

And I thought late war Lufteaffe stuff was a minefield. I'm starting to remember my least favorite thing about building WW2 Soviet stuff. John

Thank you all for your comments and contributions. I greatly appreciate it. Dennis, that is a great picture! I did a comparison between this photo and the parts I had painted with MRP and it is definitely too light to be a perfect match. One could argue for scale effect, etc., but I must say that I also compared this photo to the AKAN paint test reference that I had made when I did my IL-2 and AKAN is pretty much a perfect match. The only issue for me with that, is that I only have a little bit of the AKAN AMT-7 paint left. So, what I'm thinking is that I may try to use what's left of it, starting with the panel lines and recesses, then work my way out from that. If I run short on the paint (and even if I don't), I may finish, or come back with the MRP in a light blending process. We'll see how it looks when I get there. Michael, I remember your build and it's certainly one that inspires me to want to do a winter scheme Mig 3, as well. Years ago, I built the Classic Airframes kit in 1/48 scale, when it first came out. It's in the same livery and still hangs my shop ceiling to this day. I would love to do another, bigger, better representation. So, This evening I had some time to work on the instrument panel situation. As Alain has suggested, I'm going to do decals for the instruments, but not over the "stock" panel. Well, not quite, anyway. ....... First, I started by drilling out the instrument faces, trying to be as true to center of each circle as I could get with my Mk.1 eyeball. I used a small bit to start with and on the larger instruments on the upper portion of the panel, I came back with a slightly larger bit, to open them up to almost maximum. Again, trying to remain as centered as possible. Once the basic holes were established, I also started to thin the instrument panel. As thick as the kit part is, to just drill the holes without thinning the panel would give the appearance of looking through tubes, or into a can with instruments at the bottom. A lesson I learned the first time I tried this on an Airfix 1/24 scale Fw 190 cockpit, some 30 years ago. The next step is to cut a backing plate for the instruments to be placed. The next step is to tack them together lightly, but tight together and paint them. I had a little trouble getting them apart, as the glue I used to tack them spread a little further than I had anticipated, so a few of the circles are damaged. This isn't a real issue, as they're just the target mark for you decals to sit. However, this method also gives you the option of etching your own instrument details into the face, should you choose/need to go that route. A method I have also done on a couple of occasions. Jumping out of the cockpit for a bit, to show the intakes at the wing roots. It's my understanding that the Mig 3 had shutters that would close when on the ground, to keep debris from entering the intakes. Trumpeter has them basically closed off. Given that I plan to do this aircraft in flight, I opened them up by drilling them out and then using needle files and strips of sandpaper to clean up the edges and insides. There will still be more cleanup work to do to blend the seams, when I get to that point, but here's what they look like, at the moment. And, with that completed, it was time to do a mock-up of the subassemblies, to check the fit. As with the couple of other Trumpeter builds that I've done, the fit is actually pretty good and you click most of this stuff together without even using tape. There will definitely be some seam work, but it IS a nice kit to build and the shapes are much better than a lot of other Trumpeter kits. From here, I'll probably be alternating, back and forth, between the instrument panel, starting on painting the pilot and likely additions/corrections to a few things in the cockpit. However, my goal is to have this finished by/about the end of the month, so I don't want to get bogged down, too much. Thanks again! John

Simply gorgeous, Chuck! I recently picked up the SBD-3 kit. If it turns out even half as nice as yours did, I would be thrilled! John

So, here's where I'm at for today.... Most of the cockpit is painted. I actually went through a couple different versions, using a couple different paints, before I settled on what we see here. I didn't have a green paint for the floor that matched what I was seeing in photos. At least, not in an acrylic lacquer. I did, however, have an old bottle of Model Master enamel in "Euro Dark Green" that is really close. Unfortunately, this limited my normal oil wash/weathering process, but given that the pilot will be sitting on top of it, you won't be able to see 90% of it, anyway. As for the rest of the cockpit, I know that the colors are not correct for every item, but it got to the point that just getting it done was more important to me than stressing over colors, not to mention that this cockpit is a pretty mediocre representation of the real thing to start with. If I were doing this plane without a pilot, I would surely be using an aftermarket cockpit and/or scratchbuilding a bunch of stuff. The instrument panel, specifically, is another issue I have, but more on that in a bit. Still plenty to do here, but this is where it sits, at the moment. Here's a shot of the pilot after attaching the arms, fixing the seams and priming with MRP's black primer (sorry about the focus, but getting detail to show up with all this black was nearly impossible). Also, while things were drying in between painting sessions, I managed to get the wings together and all of the control surfaces/flaps attached. I noticed that the landing light in the wing leading edge was represented by just an indentation that was devoid of any shape or detail. Basically, it's just a flat spot that you put a clear lens over and they tell you to paint that area silver. So, I decided to make the light using scrap sprue and my drill bits. It's still fairly elementary, but at least it will appear that there is something occupying that space now. I did not take any photos of the instrument panel yet, but it appears as though I will be digging through my spare decals in an attempt to put something together that looks better than just painting the kit part. The detail on the instruments, themselves, is so faint that I can't really work with it by painting alone. As much as I would love to use an aftermarket panel, it's just not in the budget at the moment. So, we'll see what I come up with. Stay tuned. John

I agree with you on the AMT-7. For the exterior of the plane, I will likely fade it a touch. I thought the same of the AKAN paint that I used on my IL-2M3. Very "deep", in my opinion. John

Thank you, Alain! I had come across those photos and the last one is the general direction I am moving towards. I have painted the floor a dark green, but the sidewalls and framing are the light blue AMT-7 (I used MRP paint). I'll post some photos when I have a little more to show. Thanks again, John

WOW! I built the Rutman resin kit and have been fighting the urge to buy a ZM kit, but this build is SO inspirational. Fabulous job, all around! John

The pit looks friggin' awesome! John

The obvious, of course! I've done some searching and see many of the same photos. I'm starting to get a feel for it. I'm still in the dark about rank tabs, officer vs. enlisted, etc., but I don't think it's going to be a big factor, either. I have a general idea for how the pilot should look now. I am noticing that the soviets had several different patterns of flight helmets, however. Very interesting, but I think I've narrowed that down, too. I've just finished a mock-up of the cockpit parts to establish the correct position for the pilot's arms. I attached the arms and filled the seams with Milliput, which is drying now. I'm also coming to the conclusion that the subject of cockpit interior colors is a touchy one. I'm also guessing that, as with everything WW2 Soviet, there were many variations along the way, for a multitude of reasons. Even different wrecks and period photos seem to indicate this. In any case, I'm not too wound up about the cockpit colors. Most of it won't be visible anyway, especially with the pilot in place. My only real concern is what to do about the instrument panel. I don't want to buy any more aftermarket for this build, so I'll either be painting the kit part, with it's very faint instrument detail, apply decals over them, or drill out the instruments and make a backing panel with some decals from my spares. I haven't decided yet. I'm also having an emotional battle over what to do about the windscreen. Trumpeter has the vertical bars present, which shouldn't be there. To sand them away and polish the windscreen is not beyond my capabilities, as I have done that a couple of times in the past, on other projects. However, I've seen one build of this kit where the builder attempted to do that and ended up snapping the windscreen in half. Given how wide and thin the part is, I can see that as a big possibility and I"m probably going to avoid it. For now, I'm just going to focus on getting the pilot painted (and perhaps making an oxygen mask for him, as well). Cheers, John

Great work, Andy! "Pre-built engine assembly" has a familiar ring to it. John

Fabulous job! I'm curious about the figures. They look pretty crisp for the scale. What brand are they? Again, great work! John

Everything looks AMAZING! The shadow effect from the sunlight just adds to the realism. John

Denis, I usually coat all of my canopies with Future or, as I currently have, Pledge brand "floor gloss", which is the same thing. It makes them look cleaner and also helps reduce/eliminate any frosting from CA glue, which I use a lot of. John

Thank you, Dennis! There was a time that, for some reason, I couldn't get Massimo's site to come up any longer, so I assumed it had been taken down. Glad to see it's still up and it also appears, just from a quick glance, that he's updated some things since I last visited, including a new profile of this particular aircraft. Previous profiles show the darker camouflage color as a dark green and not the gray/black shown here, which is likely more correct. I may also end up cutting masks for the number and going with white and, while I'm at it, why not cut some stars, too? However, now I'll be spending some time going through his site again and it's almost like a kid in a candy store. So many options! One thing is for certain, though. I will be painting the pilot and doing this plane in flight. So, that brings me to my next question; the painting of the pilot. Last night I was able to get the pilot figure cut from the resin block and start fitting the seat mount, cockpit floor, etc. Unfortunately, the instructions that come with the pilot leave a lot to be desired. It covers the general colors, but not much in detail (uniform buttons, other equipment, etc.). Therefore, I will need to do a little more research before I start painting, so if anyone has more info they can share, it woud be greatly appreciated. I know that Soviet uniforms were sort of an olive khaki, but beyond that, my knowledge is limited. As you can see, the figure actually has a high level of detail and is really well done. I want to do it justice. On another note, in some of the photos of this group, do I see some of them wearing camouflage uniforms? I didn't know that was a thing for pilots of the VVS, or maybe a Black Sea Fleet thing. Again, any help is appreciated. Thanks for checking in, John