MiG-29A in Luftwaffe Service

[Cheetah11]

 

Great work Sean. I am looking forward to see the painting start. And then onto the Hind.

 

Nick

[Gazzas]

Brilliant results!!

[Madmax]

Ok, so a little longer than a week,

 

Thanks Wolf, Nick and Gaz!

 

Karl, you are clearly not a man to shy away from a bit of extra work on a kit .

 

[Madmax]

With the second exhaust assembly finally soldered and assembled, it was time to look at the covers that go over the engine/exhaust join. The kit part is fine, but virtually devoid of the distinctive panel lines on the real cover, so I scribed them and now it looks much better. Easy fix.

 

 

 

Before the paint can flow, I like to get the probes and other break-off bits checked for fit and cleaned up so I can prime them with the airframe. The kit probes are very difficult to sand and shape, so I used pieces of hypodermic needle instead, and also sanded the AOA probes into a triangular shape.

 

 

I made one more probe for the nose which is omitted from the kit, ground the static wicks down a bit, and assembled the lovely Master pitot probe. It is a wee bit more refined than the kit part!

 

 

The IR sensor is just a clear plastic dome, so I thought I would pop in some detail. The clear plastic is pretty thick, so the sensor is a little undersized, but will hopefully look better than an empty space.

 

 

The main wheel wells are a real masking challenge since they are pretty flat and oddly shaped. I tried wet tissue at first, but didn't like the  thought of it getting stuck in all the plumbing, so I eventually cut various pieces of sponge and used our local blu-tack in places to secure it. Now, finally, some paint!

 

 

First the exhaust outers. The MiG-29's exhaust shows quite a lot of "blueing", and I was very keen to try replicate the organic patterns it takes on. 

 

 

I sprayed the exhaust with Alclad 2 "Duraluminium" for the base colour, then sponged on some masking fluid and sprayed varying coats of "Hotmetal Blue" and "Transparent Smoke". The shapes it achieved was great, but the contrast was a little too harsh for my taste.

 

 

To soften the effect, I misted some "Gold Titanium" over the blues, and then used some graphite pencil and a rust pigment to achieve a slightly softer overall effect. The camera doesn't really capture the colours, but I'm sure you get the gist of it.

 

 

Now to prime the big bits...

 

Cheers,

 

Sean

[crobinsonh]

Great progress - really like the exhausts.

[Marcel111]

Very nice burnt blue effect on the exhausts! 

 

Marcel

[Madmax]

Thanks crobinsonh and Marcel, as well as all the "like" clickers!

 

Marcel, I see you are heading into Grumman territory next, which is cool, but I hope a famous MiG product will follow that. 

 

After looking in on the Durangokid's work, I decided to follow his lead and use the Alclad II primer thinned with Mr. Color Leveling Thinner. I was experiencing lifting issues with the Mr. Finishing Surfacer 1500 (not the only person it seems), and wanted something tough. The Alclad had some surprises in store for me however. I suspect that I was initially spraying at too high a pressure, and got a lot of pebbling on the surface. This sands off very easily however, and the primer responds well to micromesh polishing. It sure is tough, and only vigorous sanding gets through to the plastic. The surface is a little tacky after polishing, so I washed it with soapy water and am now leaving it to dry thoroughly.

 

 

Not wanting to watch paint dry, I popped into our local hobby store who's owner finally received his first shipment of MIG products. Slipping past my wife's office with a bag full of Spanish goodies, I set to work on the turkey feathers. They seem to get really chalky from the fuel residue, and I think that the fine pigments will do the trick in replicating this. I am still experimenting with the pigment fixer, and will eventually hopefully find the right amount of pigment vs fixer.

 

 

 

The "outer" feathers show slightly different heating/residue patterns, affected by the pattern of the casting on the outside. Here is my rudimentary attempt to replicate it. My pigments still come off too easily when handled, so much of this is sadly lost.

 

 

The afterburner rings are delicate bits of PE, and attach at the back of the jet pipe. Some reinforcing with a styrene ring was required.

 

 

 

The engines are finally assembled, and although the HAD brass wasn't designed for this kit, it certainly works. What a fun project!

 

[Fvdm]

Those exhaust are certainly good looking. Great work.

[Marcel111]

On 2/8/2019 at 12:19 PM, Madmax said:

Marcel, I see you are heading into Grumman territory next, which is cool, but I hope a famous MiG product will follow that. 

 

Really love the way your engines worked out. I need to use that liquid mask technique as well. Incredible how short the A/B sections of those RD-33's are, btw.

 

Sean, I am having a really hard time deciding on my next project, between the A-6E, F-14D and Mig-29C. I have actually started tinkering with the 29 but the decals that I will need to enable me to do mine will likely only be available from mid-year, I am always hesitant to launch into a project if I don't have all the required odds and ends safely inventoried.

 

Cheers,

 

Marcel

[Madmax]

Thanks Ferry and Marcel! I get your hesitation about starting to build without all the bits you require Marcel, after all - one can't wage war without secure supply lines! Go Grumman.

 

 

Every time I start building a model, I should remind myself that what I have bought is not in fact whatever it says on the box, but this instead:

 

 

Here is a prime example - exhibit A. I could have sworn the little strengthener plate was flat before I primed the model (your honour). How on earth does that happen? Chemistry of course! Luckily I was able to sand it flat without removing all 0.13mm of styrene.

 

 

 

Time to paint.

 

I really wanted to try the mig AMMO acrylics, but given the chemistry lesson I'd just been handed, thought better of it. I will first practice and learn how to use pure acrylic out of the public eye.  The actual colours in the AMMO range are notable for their huge range, and they look pretty accurate to me. I used them to base my mixing of Tamiya acrylics on. First up the "dielectric" grey bits were painted.

 

 

Two coats of AMMO "heavy chipping fluid" later, and I then did what the Luftwaffe did - spray "Light Compass Grey" over the dielectric paint.

 

 

Then with a bit of water and a paintbrush I did what 600 or so knots of Luft did to the Luftwaffe's paint...

 

 

With that bit of fun out of the way, the bottom got a coat of the "Light Compass Grey". It is quite difficult to make out which colour goes where on the AirDoc instructions, so I have adapted mine based on various photographs as well as this colour scheme gleaned from wings palette. It appears that the colour scheme changed a bit over the years, and I am doing a very early version of Norm 90J.

 

 

The upper surfaces first get "Compass Grey". notice the subtle difference in the shades of compass greys on the underside of the horizontal stabs.

 

 

Finally the "Medium Grey" completed the upper surfaces. At this point I noticed that the chemistry worm was still turning, and have had to sand down the fairings on the chaff/flare dispensers. The very thin styrene seems to react poorly to either the styrene cement, the Aclad primer, or a combination of the two. Whatever 

 

 

I set the big piece aside to sulk and dry a bit, and tackled the last of the building tasks - the weapons pylons. I really enjoy the MiG-29's missile pylons. They look like they were designed by sci-fi movie prop designers, and named by the script writers from Star Wars. How's this, the R-73E missile goes on a P-72-1D launcher. Cool! Here they are straight from the kit. The smallest one is a P-62-1DB1, the big one is the P-72-1D and the  long thin one is an APU 470. The APU is my favourite.

 

 

Although I think the Trumpeter effort on the pylons is excellent, I wanted to add a little detail since I want them missile-less on the model, and they were designed to be missile-full. The first thing was to add rails, then hollow out the nose cones, and add a securing device of sorts. The APU 470 has what looks like vents below the rails, and weld seams all over the launcher body. after hours of fiddling this is what they look like. This kind of detail work will lead to madness or blindness, and I would rather suggest that you order Zactomodels' beautiful pylons and weapons. 

 

 

[Marcel111]

Nice progress: Really diggin the worn paint on the nose look, spot-on!

[Squizzy 78]

I really enjoy watching a paint job start to go down, it's looking really good. And those exhausts look killer! 

[Starfighter]

I love it, surface detail looks absolutely flawless. Go ahead, Sir!

[Madmax]

Thanks Marcel, Squizzy and Ben!

 

In the meantime I have managed to get some more paint down.

 

 

All the greys are in place, but even at fifty shades, it needs a bit more. As with the MiG-23 build, I sponged on some masking fluid and then gave it a coat of very thin white/ochre mix. here you can see the subtle and variable way it breaks the plain surface.

 

 

 

 

Glossing the model was done with Tamiya (acrylic) X-22 and levelling thinner - a first for me. It will take some time to master the art (I assume), and micromesh had to rescue my "satin" coat. The nice thing about the micromesh is that it starts the weathering process in a natural way, exposing high spots and ridges! The Luftwaffe decals are from AirDOC, and although quite old (2002), did the job just fine. Some silvering had to be treated with chemistry, and one or two of the decals are oversize by about 10-20%, but it is the only way to do this scheme as far as I know. I really enjoy the decals on the vertical stab!

 

 

Decals are provided for every single panel on the Fulcrum, but here again I saw the potential for madness - and avoided it...

 

 

After spraying a coat of micro flat (more like satin) on the relevant parts - here we are ready for final assembly. There really are a lot of parts, and in my mind clearly separates an aircraft build from armour.

 

 

There are some metal leading edges on the MiG-29, and they often look black in photo's. Here I buffed a white aluminium leading edge with gun metal pigment to achieve the look.

 

 

Almost there,

 

Sean

 

 

 

[Marcel111]

Love that patchy effect you achieve with masking fluid! Will need to remember that for my F-14.

 

Cheers,

Marcel