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Forcat Ushtarake Ajore Shqipetare MiG-15 UTI


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My build for this GB will be the lovely Hobbyboss kit of the Mig-15 UTI in the old Albanian People's Army Air Force.

Decals will come from the Blue Rider sheet.

These planes were used for many years in Albania, being delivered in 1955 and with some of them being retired in 2002 !

Albania was part of the eastern bloc at the end of WW2 and the MiGs were received from the Soviet Union. In the mid '50s however Enver Hoxha, leader of the country, lost his admiration for the USSR and looked toward China, that in his opinion was building a purer form of communism. When a Soviet bakced plot to ovethrow him was discovered in 1961, he broke any relation with the USSR. From that day on, the Air Force received chinese copies of soviet planes.

In 1978 he denounced Maoism as well and broke relations with China. The Air Force kept going using the same old planes and when the communist regime in Albania fell in 1992, the first european visitors found air bases there were true aviation museums !

The MiG-15 UTi used in Albania came from 3 sources: soviet built examples, czech built CS.102 copies, and chinese provided FT.2. "My" MiG is coded 246, and is one of the original soviet built planes delivered in 1955. Unfortunately this means I might have to modify the airbrakes, as the HB kit has the shape normally associated with the MiG-15 bis. However I've seen pictures of albanian UTIs with this style of airbrakes... I might find a way to avoid the modification.

Pictures will follow soon... as soon as I get the battery of my camera back to life !

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cool. i have the single seater, been after the 2 seater for ages.

looking forward to this. i would be doing a 48th trumpy one but cant find the correct decals i need

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Ok, here's some pictures of the little MiG ! And a little plane it is, in length it's not much longer than a spitfire...

First of all the box, with a picture of the model completed in Soviet 4-colour scheme, one of the alternatives included in the kit.

Box.jpg

This is one of the nicest Hobbyboss easy kits series. As all of these, the main parts are already cut from sprues and laid in a vacformed plastic tray:

Content1.jpg

At first sight there's a lot of parts missing, but lifting the tray reveals a second big sprue with the other parts required:

Content2.jpg

The kit includes decals for a soviet and an Iraqi plane. The kit decals look quite poor to me, the green of the iraqi insignia being particularly bad.

However this is of no big interest to me, as I'll be using decals for the Albanian People's Army Air Force from Blue Rider sheet BR219. This is long OOP and was bought from Rare Plane Detective in the US. Jeff of RPD is a top notch guy, it's always a pleasure to deal with him !!!

Decals.jpg

Being an easy kit, the fuselage is made of two parts while the wing is a single part that will be clamped betwen the fuselage bits. The level of detail is quite good...especially for a kit that I paid something like 6 euro....

mig15-1.jpg

The panel lines are all recessed and quite nice, although other kits from the same series are better in this respect.

First thing to do will be to improve the cockpit a bit. What's there is quite nice, but the instrument panels are flat, something will be required....

Edited by Giorgio N
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I was well impressed with the HB Mig, hope its all going well

Hope so... unfortunately I'm finding very little time to do any modelling lately :(

Anyway, first step was to tackle the problem of avoiding a tail sitter:

mig15-2.jpg

Plenty of lead is required and I added some in the intake splitter, blanked by some scrap plasticard, some under the cockpit tub and some more in the fuselage. I always use silicon to glue the lead, this keeps the metal in place and being flexible is not affected by any hit the model might take.

One thing that can be noticed is that I decided to eliminate the tabs on the fuselage front, used to align the forward fuselage. These would have been very visible from the intake. The fuselage should still align well enough because of the way the parts are designed. Once the tabs were removed, the whole intake area was smoothed.

Next will be the cockpit: the kit needs a couple of instrument panels, some addition to the control sticks, and some work on the rear bulkhead, to avoid seeing throught the fuselage.

Edited by Giorgio N
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Slow progress, but progress nonetheless !!!

The cockpit tub has been painted and added to the lower fuselage, together with the front instrument panel. The air intake area has also been painted with humbrol 56 aluminum enamel.

mig15-6.jpg

mig15-5.jpg

Some plasticard was used to close the gaps behind the seats. I'm sure some filler will be required to complete the job, but this will have to wait until the fuselage is closed.

The cockpit tub had some addition to the control sticks and the throttles. My plan is to build the kit almost OOB, just improving what's strictly necessary. For those who might be interested, Pavla do a resin cockpit that I believe would turn this into a great model.

The seats have been painted. They are not bad for the price but will require at least the belts and the ejection handle

mig15-3.jpg

The rear instrument panel will be attached only when the upper fuselage is glued, as the upper part of the panel will fit against an area that is fixd to the upper fuselage.

mig15-4.jpg

The panels were made using 0.4 mm thick plasticard, drilled with bits of different diameter. These panels were then glued on top of the flat panels provided in the kits. I tried to reproduce the instrument frames, but gave up after a couple of attempts.

Next will be reworking the exhaust: Hobbyboss would like the modeller to add a reproduction of the turbine last stage around 5 mm before the end of the fuselage. This looks quite bad, the MiG-15, as any jet plane with a centrifugal engine, had a long pipe after the last stage, and this needs reproducing with something.

Edited by Giorgio N
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i had one on order for ages at my LMS, just picked it up, and ordered another one, and single seater. for a fiver cant be bad. and again makes the new airfix one look so much worse

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Now the plan for the weekend was to work on a paper I've been asked to present at a conference... but I realised my mind was not there to write, so I decided to keep working on the little MiG !

First I had to sort the exhaust. This in the kit would have the turbine some 3 mm behind the fuselage end, too shallow ! So I made a tube out of sticky paper, coated with aluminum tape.

mig15-7.jpg

Not shown in the pictures, I preferred to attach the wing to the upper fuselage, so that I could have a good fit there. This will mean a less good fit on the undersides... but I'd rather have problems on the undersides than on the uppers !

Once the exhaust was sorted, it was time to finally close the fuselage !!!

mig15-8.jpg

mig15-11.jpg

The fit was decent but not perfect. A bit of filler was required, but most areas were ok with just a little correcting fluid.

The result of the work in the exhaust is not bad, the tube is only slightly smaller than the fuselage, as it's in the real plane.

mig15-10.jpg

The rear instrument panel was added too. The faces of the instruments were coated with Synthaglass, an italian made product designed to reproduce transparencies. A bit like the old microscale kristal kleer but better.

mig15-9.jpg

Nest will be to attach the front of the intake. The tabs on this part will need cutting, as for some reason the parts don't fit well as they are.

And now that the main parts are together, it really is a small plane !!!

Edited by Giorgio N
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  • 2 weeks later...

A small update: the fuselage is not complete with the intake ring. I also added the airbrakes.... closed for one reason: as I mentioned before, the MiG-15 used two different types of airbrakes. Hobbyboss moulded the MiG-15bis style on this kit, that only a few UTIs actually used. My plane is one of the original batch buit in the Soviet Union, therefore it's likely that it has the older and smaller style of airbrakes. To do these, I glued the airbrakes shut and rescribed the original shape.

mig15-12.jpg

mig15-13.jpg

I also used some filler to rework some areas in the cockpit. This is now ready to accept the ejction seats. Once these are in place, I'll glue the canopy on.

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Thanks folks, at least this is moving faster than the Crusader I'm building for the Vietnam War GB....

Some progress over the week end ! I completed the cockpit adding the seats. These were given seat belts made from foil... not 100% accurate (not even 80% accurate actually), but look good enough.

mig15-14.jpg

The MiG-15 UTI features an internal transparent shiled to protect the rear pilot from the blast of the front pilot ejection seat. This is really a prominent feature and is not reproduced in the kit, so it had to be added from scratch ! Also visible is a very rough representation of the gunsight. The picture is bad unfortunately...

mig15-15.jpg

With the interior complete, it was time to attach the canopy ! And here disaster almost struck ! I was already in a bad mood as my favourite football team had lost the derby, so leaving the road to the league to the hated cousins from the same city, and I made the mistake of doing something on the model before going to bad... never, never work on a model after a bad football match ! A drop of glue went on the inside surface of the canopy ! I could not vent my anger because it was already 11 PM, so I had to take a deep breath, close my eye, relax and do something. I worked hard with very fine abrasive sticks, then a coat of klear... it's not as nice as it used to be, but it's acceptable. Let's say that Albanian MiGs were very old and canopies get scratched in real life too..

mig15-16.jpg

mig15-17.jpg

It can be seen that at the front and rear of the canopies there is some plastic missing: this broke when I separated the canopy from the sprue, a touch of filler will sort this !

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looking good. i cant wait to start mine, although this time i will add lots of resin n etch when i can afford it.

if you get nowhere with the canopy i intend getting a vac form for mine, to have it open, so you could have mine if you still want to have yours closed. all i would ask for is the postage covered.

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Mrcooljules, thanks for your kind offer ! However the canopy was already glued on in the latest pictures and I've now filled the missing parts, I'll live with it.

Miroslav, glad you like it ! I believe the shield is a a very prominent feature and it would be a pity not to have it. There are a few other parts I couldhave added, but decided to keep it simple. For those who want more detail, Pavla does a resin cockpit set that is quite nice.

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Will, unfortunately the model has been stalled while I finished another model for the vietnam GB. From today I can focus again on the MiG !

Re. the exhausts, I suggest looking for a drinking straw of a similar diameter. This was my original plan, but couldn't find any at home... I should have popped into a mcdonald or similar ! :D

I found another part that needs work in the meantime: the front landing gear looks nothing like the real one !

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  • 1 month later...

After more than a month, finally some update !

There have been a few reasons for the lack of updates on this one: spent some time away for a conference, been busy at work, and worst of all hit a problem when painting !

The plan was to use humbrol metalcote on this one, and I decided to use a black undercoating. As the wing root areas are in a faded black, I used tamiya nato blac. This sprayed beautifully, however when I covered this with the humbrol metallic, I noticed that this didn't stick to the underlying tamiya paint. Then it started a paint, remove, sand routine for a couple of days, until I managed to make it work fine. And what happened then ? The fuselage joint cracked ! In this kit the joint is horizontal, and the real plane has no joint there, so I had to do something... and this was.... you guess, sand-fill-sand-prime-fill again-sand again.... in the end the jont disappeared although when viewed at some angle it's possible to notice where the original paint was sanded off. At this point honestly I've had enough and I'll live with it !

So here it is in all its natural metal glory ! There are some subtle differences in some panels, that don't really show up in the pictures. The plan is to coat most panels with satin or matt paint after decalling, to reproduce the dull appearance of these planes, while leaving other panels shinier.

mig15-21.jpg

mig15-20.jpg

mig15-19.jpg

mig15-18.jpg

As mentioned at the begining of the thread, I'm using decals from an old Blue Rider sheet. I never used these before (I believe not many people have ever used these decals..) so I first tested one of the roundels on the wings undersurfaces. And here's the result:

mig15-22.jpg

The decals are quite thick, but settle down well in the panel lines using the gunze decal liquid (that I used on this one because it's more aggressive than my usual microscale ones). There's a hint of the carrier film being visible but I believe that with a coat of clear this will disappear. I also believe that this is the result of dirt on the decal that was dissolved by the decal liquids.

Next steps: Complete decalling and in the meantime start working on the landing gear.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still struggling, but this time it's more a matter of my job giving me plenty of troubles, and I'm finding it harder and harder to do any work on my models...

Anyway, decals are on ! The red/black stars look very good IMHO on the natural metal finish. This insignia has later been replaced by a red/black roundel.

mig15-23.jpg

And yesterday I even managed to paint and attach the main landing gear !

mig15-24.jpg

I painted the landing gear and the wheel wells in a medium grey because I saw this colour in a couple of walkarounds. I'm not sure if this is the case for albanian aircrafts, but IMHO adds some more colour to what is otherwise a very dull finish (insignia apart).

Next will be modfying the nose gear leg. This is totally wrong in the HB kit and something must really be done. What, I've yet to decide...

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  • 3 weeks later...

The little MiG is close to be completed ! As mentioned before, it was time to attack the front landing gear leg. It took me a while to decide the action to take, then I realised that the GB is coming to its end and I'd better hurry up !

Here's the landing gear on the sprue:

mig15-25.jpg

The shape is not correct, the lower part is too "horizontal" and the front strut is not right. This could be overlooked, however there's a negative side effect: the seat of the model is all wrong ! The MiG-15 as a "nose up" attitude when on the ground and the gear leg as it is give this attitude:

mig15-26.jpg

Not good ! Something must be done ! And the only thing to do is to cut the lower part from the top, insert a metal part inside the top, a couple of plasti parts on the lower part and here's the result:

mig15-27.jpg

Both normal plastic glue and CA glue were used to attach the parts and the leg was then left to set for a good day. It should be robust enough by now. If today I manage to finish working before too late, it will be glued to the model before this evening !!

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