MiG-15bis KPAAF (North Korean AF) [1:48 Tamiya] - RFI

[Alex]

Taking the plunge into doing my first jet fighter, in fact first military plane of any sort from a post-WW2 setting.

 

I got this kit from an Ebay seller who had already collected quite a bit of AM for it:

 

Although it turns out that the two Eduard PE packs are the same one, and a lot of what's there is for the cockpit and thus won't be used in favor of using the True Details resin cockpit.

 

Looking though the box I found the usual very high quality, very detailed Tamiya plastic:

 

But found that the decals were a write-off - the red ink had bled into the adjoining white areas, turning them pink.  This kit is at least a dozen years old, so perhaps its just an aging effect.

 

 

I thought about just trying to do the whole scheme with paint, but figured that those fine white outlines around red numerals might be hard to get precise at 1:48.  Fortunately I was able to find an AM decal sheet on line that had the aircraft of a famous Soviet ace who flew a PKAAF-branded plane, which is exactly what I want.  So much for my discount MiG project.

 

I've never used a complete resin cockpit replacement before, but have read countless lamentations over the difficulty of getting them to fit inside kit fuselages.  So the first thing I did was tape this one together and try it.

 

Turns out it fits fine as-is.  The only issue is that the cylindrical nose weight that's supplied with the kit won't fit under it the way it's meant to with the kit cockpit tub.  So I weighed it (16g) and glued the equivalent in lead sinkers into a couple of the fuselage parts:

 

That's it so far on this one.  I'm currently accumulating photos of the jet engine from the web in hopes of doing a fair about of scratch detailing on it.  I plan to display the model with the rear part of the fuselage removed (the maintenance cart that holds it is supplied in the kit, even) as if the engine was to be serviced.

[Alex]

Oh, and the other thing I ordered immediately was a sheet of Airscale 1/48 gauge decals for early Soviet aircraft.   Really so much for my discount MiG project...

[LSP_Kevin]

I built this kit quite some years ago now, and it was my first-ever foiling project. Ultimately I gave it away to a friend, who turned it into a sci-fi ground racer!

 

 

Kev

[Alex]

I've been surfing the web in search of good high-resolution photos of the Klimov VK-1 engine, and have found a bunch, both fully installed and in various stages of disassembly.  So this should provide me with more than the amount of detail I have time and skill to scratch build at 1/48.

 

In the midst of this search, I ran across this classic example of safety-regs-be-damned Soviet ingenuity.  No faster way to clear ice and snow from a runway than with a phalanx of truck-mounted jet engines...

[Alex]

Slowly wandering through the instructions on this one.  I've been working on a number of subsections in parallel.  For example, the rear fuselage can be completed separately since it will be detachable.  I painted the insides with a 50:50 mix of Alclad White Aluminum and Semi-Matte Aluminum, over gray Mr Surfacer.

 

And then glued it up and shot the outside with Mr Surfacer.  Seam cleanup sure is quicker with Tamiya kits versus the short run stuff I usually seem to be building.

 

Looking through the AM stuff that came with the kit I've decided against using a lot of it.  The resin wheels/tires were "bulged" unlike the kit ones, but the wheel face detail was so rough relative to the clean, sharp kit parts that I decided to use the latter.  The resin control surfaces appeared to be identical to the ones molded into the kit wings/tail (in fact I suspect they were cast using the Tamiya kit as a template).  The were sharp and clean, but all of them were warped, so they would have to be straightened (and then hope they didn't re-warp over time), and using them would have required cutting up the kit wings and tail.  Unless you were dead-set on posing the control surfaces deflected from neutral position, I can't see why you'd bother (I'm not).  The Eduard cockpit mask set I did use, but annoyingly (this is the first time I've had this happen with Eduard) the masks were not quite completely cut through the yellow kabuki tape, so I had to trace over all of the cuts with a scalpel blade to free them up.  Not batting very high on the AM front here so far.  I'm glad I didn't buy all this stuff separately!

 

The resin cockpit was also pretty rough/dodgy in surface detail and smoothness (at least compared to some of the brilliant Aires ones of seen photos of on these forums), but I decided to use it anyway because it does have more detail than the kit cockpit.

 

I initially painted the cockpit parts with some MRP paint labeled "Russian cockpit blue MiG-15/17/19" that I must have bought at some point and forgotten about.  But it looked too baby blue to me for a weathered scale color.

 

So I redid them with RLM-76, which I liked a lot more. 

 

Then tried to deploy some pretty poor brush painting technique on them.  I gave them a good coat of acrylic gloss so that I can do some oil wash on them.  If it ends up looking crappy I will just make this one a closed-canopy job ;-)

 

 

 

[aircommando130]

Looking good so far. Better get it finished up pretty quick!

I read today that "rocketman" is mad at the USA again! LOL!

 

Cheers...Ron

[Gazzas]

Nice work so far.  I have this kit...  But I hadn't considered and AM for it.

[Alex]

8 hours ago, Gazzas said:

Nice work so far.  I have this kit...  But I hadn't considered and AM for it.

Based on what I got as a bundle along with this one, I would not bother, unless you can find higher-grade stuff than these True Details pieces.  I'm using the resin cockpit because it's there, but I could have detailed the kit cockpit just as well.  

[Alex]

Work continues on the aft fuselage.  In most of the period photos I've seen of these birds, the airbrake covers are a significantly darker/shinier tone than the rest of the fuselage.  So I've painted those with a mix of Airframe Aluminum and Duraluminum.  It's real shiny, and may need a bit of toning down.  We'll see.  I'm going to mount them closed since the rear fuselage won't fit on its maintenance cart with them open (nor would it make sense for them to be open in that context).

 

In some photos the control surfaces seem a bit darker in tone than the adjacent parts of the stabs.  The overall look should be a pretty matte aluminum color to reflect the protective aluminized lacquer these planes were coated with.  I also wanted to try and engineer a bit more visual interest (not entirely true-to-life, perhaps) coupled to the nice surface detail that Tamiya has molded in to the kit.  So I measured all of the little circular, oval, and rectangular hatches on the airframe (of which there are many) and made this set of masks:

 

It also contains wheel masks, for later.

 

I applied those over all the hatch covers and other little surface details.

 

Then spent too long mummifying the thing in masking tape to fill all of the in between spaces.

 

Sprayed on some Mr Color Gloss Black

 

Forgot to take a picture with the masking removed - imagine it with all the little hatches black.

 

Then I sprayed the whole thing with a 50/50 mix of White Aluminum and Semi-Matte Aluminum.  The trick was getting enough paint on to cover the gray primer well and make the gray/black contrast subtle, without going too far and erasing the contrast completely.  I think I got it ~right.  Depending on the angle of the light, the black-undercoated surfaces vary from invisible to quite obvious, which is what I was hoping for.  This may be (OK, is) a bit unrealistic, but I think it adds some nice visual pop to an otherwise bland, uniformly dull aluminum surface.

 

It took a bit of time to do this, but time well-spent I think.  I will do it on the front fuselage and wings too, of course.

 

I've about finished with the cockpit.  I'll take a photo when it's assembled and flat-coated.  The only thing remaining is the IP, and I now have my Airscale gauge decals, so it's just a matter of a few hours of squinting to try and get the tiny things in place...  Then I can close the forward fuselage, add the wings, and paint as above.

 

The real chunk of work left on this model is the engine.  Once the forward fuselage is done I need to get to grips with my plan to transform the fairly simplified kit engine into something like this:

[Alex]

Wrapped up the cockpit.  It's really rough, but it is small, so it does not show much without a magnifier (at least for my antiquated eyes).

 

With IP installed

 

I'm not super-happy with it overall, but having it done means I can button up the front fuselage.  It's not too visible then:

 

In closing up the front end I ran into the first real "fit issue" with this kit (any fit problems with a Tamiya kit are a bit surprising!).

 

This isn't actually a big deal - what's happening is that the front part of the fuselage side piece is just too sharply curved inward, so it misaligns with the nose intake ring and the bottom part that mounts the cannon nacelles.  The near (port) side shows "pre", while the far (starboard) side shows the alignment after I wedged some folded aluminum foil under the piece to spring it outward (previously both sides were too far inset).  I don't have to worry about concealing the edge of the foil piece as it will be hidden by the LG bay door when it's installed.

 

I had to make some metal gun barrels to replace the molded plastic ones - I think there are few things you can do that make a bigger visual impact for less work than this.

 

I need to decide how much I'm going to stress about cleaning up the inside of the intake ducting, which from the above angle clearly shows the locator tabs for the nose ring.

 

[Jeff T]

Looking good Alex!

 

Cheer's,

Jeff.

[mustang1989]

Coming along very nicely. 

[Alex]

Got the wings assembled to the forward fuselage and the whole thing primed.

 

Then started in on making those mods to the engine pieces that need to happen before I start painting them.  Added these little ports on the exhaust tube, which at least in some photos have tubing running to some or all of them.

 

And added this ring of tubing, which later gets connected forward to the main part of the engine with two other pieces of tubing.

 

Needed to cover this part of the aft compressor piece so you wouldn't see and inaccurate gap.

 

Then started adding these tubing attachment bosses to the combustion chambers

 

Still loads to figure out on this, but I'm glad that it's solidly underway at this point.  I'm hoping to wrap the whole thing up by the end of May (assuming my decals arrive at some point) so I can focus on an ambitious project for the next GB...

Edited May 7, 2021 by Alex

[LSP_Kevin]

Looking good, Alex!

 

Kev

[Alex]

Started in on masking for the contrast underpaint on the forward half of the bird.

 

Of course I again forgot to take any other in-process photos of this...

 

With the same 50/50 Alclad mix sprayed on:

 

Here's a peek at what the halves of the airframe will eventually look like when joined

 

In a bit of well-timed good news, I got an email from kitlinx today indicating that the decals for this project have shipped out.  So I really need to keep the mojo flowing on this one to get a good amount of scratch detail built for the engine and then hit the detail paint and decal phase.  Three weeks to wrap it up before the next GB starts.

 

I also received in the mail today this guy's eventual shelfmate:

 

I realize that's hardly a creative combo, but it feels kind of required - they go together like PB & J.  I'm looking to get a copy of the CMK resin weapons bay kit to spruce this up with (gotta balance the engine detailing on the MiG).  It looks really nice in pictures - you can cut away the sidewalls behind the panel with the MG openings and show the gun breaches, ammo belts, etc.  It appears to be backordered everywhere right now, but I've got time - I don't see having a window to start this kit until the fall probably.  I'm also leaning away from the (kind of garish) box art schemes provided by Hasegawa.  I want to build an early Korean War battle veteran - a plane that went out every day to hold the line against the MiGs over the Yalu River.  I've got a couple of books to ponder to select a final scheme.  Ideas anyone?  Probably also not going to do McCain's Marine F-86, which has been done a bunch.

 

In making even longer-term plans (i.e. inventing reasons to buy kits), I decided that to complement these two planes, which in their day were the bleeding edge of technology and made Korea the first example ever of jet-on-jet air combat, I should do two more Korean conflict planes, but in this case holdovers from WW2.  The initial impetus for this concept was this kit.

Which I read a couple of pretty positive reviews about.  Of course, then I needed to find an appropriate counter from the Soviet, er, Chinese, er... North Korean side.  Some digging revealed that the Chinese AF did field some Soviet-surplus Tu-2 "Bat" medium bombers in KPAAF colors (we know this because the USAF shot a number of them down).  And in fact there's still one on display in a museum in Beijing today.

 

From what I've read, this kit entails exactly the kind and amount of "proper modeling" that you'd expect from a short-run kit produced by a Chinese company you've never heard of.

 

BUT, if you want a Tu-2S in 1:48, there are not a ton of options out there for you.  So when I get around to doing these (they're both ordered), I will wind up with a "quarter-scale quartet" for the Korean War section of the new model display shelf that I already have to build because the current one is full....