MeneMene

Intake splitter with landing light The fuselage comes in four parts, front and back halves. I've decided to join the components lengthwise before putting the two halves together. I've also filled some very large sink marks on the intake sides.

Some new information after tracking down a new book: For s/n 2315263, I will be using the nose light and deleting/filling the wing light, and using the air brakes as supplied in the kit. , Does anyone have any information about Mig-15 drop tank use in Korea? Would they primarily be the conformal slipper tanks of the later pylon-mounted larger drop tanks?

Hello! As I'm now wrapping up my Stuka build, I've begun to work on the Trumpeter MiG-15. Along with it, I have the Eduard zoom PE set, Aires ejection seat and engine nozzle, Master brass gun barrels, and the Cold War Studios correction to fix the angle/profile of the tail. I'll start this by asking for some advice: the Trumpeter kit seems a mix/match of different Mig-15bis variants. It has the larger airbrakes but they're one-piece instead of two halves. It has both the landing light in the nose intake splitter as well as the one under the left wing (it should be one or the other, with the nose light on the earlier examples and the wing on later versions). Lastly, it has the two seperate cannon blast plating instead of the larger one-piece example of the later Mig-15bis. The aircraft I am doing is from February 1952, serial number 2315263. I don't know at what time point the changes separating an "early" from a "late" Mig-15 would take place; based on the photographs I've seen most of the Korean Migs lack the intake splitter light, so I'm assuming they would be late-model Mig-15bis. Here is what I plan to do for the model: 1) Scribe a new line down the middle of the airbrakes to represent the later two-piece brakes 2) Install the clear part for the nose intake splitter light, but sand it smooth and paint it, leaving only the underwing landing light. 3) Take some thin styrene sheet and join the two gun blast panels into the single-piece example used in the later versions. Again, I would appreciate any help/corrections. First up is the cockpit. I started by painting the plywood floors: I used Tamiya XF-23 to represent the blue/grey cockpit color. Here is the cockpit after an application of XF-23, chipping to reveal the plywood underneath on the floor, as well as some detail painting and some of the photoetch set. Slightly better lighting, as well as a view of the Aires ejection seat with the Eduard belts attached. I needed to cut off part of the seat handles to get it to fit in the cockpit, but it's hard to tell once everything's in place. Eduard instrument panel with Tamiya gloss over the instrument dials. And here is the final cockpit before installation. My apologies, I got carried away and didn't take too many in-progress pictures.

Ok, some progress to report: The kit decals were all yellowed, and that's on top of the weird cream color that Hasegawa decals of this era use to represent white. So instead I made my own masks for the markings. Here are the results: After a gloss coat in preparation for a wash and stencil decals: I painted and installed the finely detailed brass 37 mm gun barrels from Master: I also added a wash and did some weathering/oil stains/exhaust stains with the airbrush. Did not take any pictures of that part, but here is the end result after a flat coat: One of the final steps is the assembly and installation of the rear-facing MG81z. I'm replacing the kit representation with an Eduard Brassin example, and will attach it to the mount provided by the Aires cockpit set. Here is the assembled gun attached on the aires mount: And then attached in the cockpit. The hardest part was bending and attaching the photo-etch representing the ammunition feeds, but it's all in place now and somewhat symmetric. After final paint and a wash: Final steps will be installation of the rear canopy around the gun barrels, then attaching the ring sights to their mounts on the canopy, and then the antenna and antenna wire. Should be done after that.

I've been able to get by with airbrushing them in 1/48. Decals would probably be a good idea for 1/72 though.

Here is the Eduard profipack SPAD XIII. I used turnbuckles and replacement vickers guns from gaspatch, otherwise OOB. Decals are for Nungesser's aircraft, including the experimental gun camera on the top wing. Most of the markings are painted with stencils, only the serial # and the black heart are decals.

I added some plumbing and wiring to the cannon pods, and painted them. Painting started with Gunze RLM 70 LOTS of masking Basic camouflage done, now to make stencils and paint on the markings

Here is my representation of Tamiya's D.520. Hardest part was settling on what paints to use, I think it came out close enough. I added some eduard seat belts and some resin exhausts (quickboost I think), but other than that and some scratchbuilding in the cockpit it was an out of the box effort. The WIP build can be found here

Replaced the wing and flap actuators with brass rod bent to shape. Not a perfect representation, but the best I can do without fully reconstructing the hinge mount and a lot better than what comes with the kit. I also glued a length of clear sprue in place to represent the landing light. Many of the vertical frames of the Ju-87 canopy were inside the plexiglas and remained the interior cockpit color. After giving the canopies a coat of RLM 66, I've now masked off those vertical panel lines so they will remain that color after I paint the camouflage on top. The rear of the chin radiator had absolutely no detail or internal structure, and I couldn't find any clear photographs or diagrams of what should be back there. So instead of having the entire inside of the nose structure visible through the radiator opening I covered the inside with some black styrene sheet. All subassemblies in place, ready to paint. After some black primer: I also assembled the Master brass 37mm cannons. Next step is to add all the plumbing and cables on the cannon mounts, then paint those.

Resin gunsight installed: Dive handles attached to the inside of the front canopy: Cockpit is now done after the rear gunner got his back rest: Here is the current state of the build: I still need to check a few more seams, I suspect the underside still needs a bit more work, primer will tell. After that and once I finish up the radiators and add the flight control actuator rods, we can begin painting.

Tack! What about the airbrakes? Basically I'm trying to decide if I need to get an aftermarket airbrake set if they're going to be open. I would assume if it's one of the aircraft with the deactivated airbrakes they would be permanently shut?

Got all the crude actuator rods removed without causing too much collateral damage. Some primer will show me if I need more work before I add the new brass actuators. I also scraped and sanded off the incorrect, rectangular anti-slip areas on the upper wing.... ....and replaced them with more accurate anti-slip bars made from thin plastic sheet.

I managed to recreate the tail and underside nav lights with extra thick CA glue and tamiya clear paint. Wrapping up the final details now, I'll be posting in the ready for inspection area soon.

I got my hands on the Tarangus JA-37 and am working on the various aftermarket items and modifications I need. My understanding is when the Viggen is on the ramp, shut down, the hydraulic pressure bleeds off, and the canard controls, flaps, ram air turbine, and top thrust reverser all droop. Does anyone know if the same applies to the airbrakes? Furthermore, I've heard that later versions of the JA-37 had the airbrakes disabled and wired shut; does anyone know what time period or production numbers this involved? Thanks

Thanks, I'll keep that option in mind. One thing I'm struggling with at the moment is deciding on if I should or should not add on the applique armor to the fuselage sides. For reference of what I'm talking about, look at Brett Green's build here, where he added armor on either side of the pilot's cockpit: http://hsfeatures.com/features04/ju87g2bg_2.htm Here are some pics of Rudel's aircraft: And supposedly the same aircraft after whitewash: In the first two pictures, you can clearly see one of the triangular filling stencils right where the armor should be, which seems to suggest it was absent. However, here, we can see a different Ju-87G that to my eyes has the applique armor, with what looks like the stencil repainted on top of it: Again here: And here is another different Ju-87G with what looks like the applique armor in place, so it seems like we can confirm at least some aircraft had it: Anyways, does anyone else have an opinion/guidance on this? The bottom set of pictures definitely show aircraft with the extra armor and even some with stencils over the armor, so we can't say for sure that Rudel's aircraft did not carry it based on the fact that we see stencils on the picture. On the other hand, the pictures of Rudel's aircraft don't really show anything that clearly looks like the additional armor, but they are also more blurry as well. I'm still leaning towards no, mainly based on how clearly you can see the shadow from the armor in the bottom pictures and how I think I would see a bit more defined shape there in the blurrier Rudel photographs if it was indeed attached, especially on the whitewashed aircraft.

Finished painting the cockpit, test-fitting the components here. The fit was a very tight squeeze, and I needed to put the instrument panel in place before closing everything up instead of dropping it in from above afterwards like the instructions suggested. Sorry for the picture quality, it was hard to get light balance with the dark grey. Tight squeeze, lots of CA glue and tension, but it's all together now. I need to sand down the ledges by the cockpit front, I think they're for a different Stuka version. The pilot seat was quite difficult to get into place after everything was together as well. I got the Aires radiator set to give some depth/detail to those areas. The kit representation is just the radiator shape stuck over the flat wing surface with no detail beneath. The first step is to measure out where they will go with the provided PE template and then remove the wing surface at these spots. I used tape to provide a guide to straighten the edges where necessary and dropped some CA glue mixed with talc to fill the gap. Perfect fit, and a large improvement over the kit representation. Both radiators in place. Also of note, the kit decals seem to be from the time when Hasegawa didn't use any white ink and instead left all the white areas as this off cream color. I can make my own stencils for most of them, but the serial number on the tail seems like it might be too small for the Cricut to handle it. Not sure what to do- I haven't been successful in locating any alternate Ju-87G aftermarket decals available for purchase.

Initial paintwork, still plenty to do: Other cockpit components. One area I'm a little confused by is the bulkhead behind the pilot. Based on the resin parts I'm fairly sure that the cutouts are indeed supposed to be filled, probably as extra armor, but I can't find any clear reference of this being done on the real aircraft. There are a bunch of boxes and cables on the back going over the plates so it wouldn't make much sense to cut them out. Speeking of additional armor, I think I'm going to err on the side of no extra fuselage armor, as in the photograph of Rudel's aircraft I've been able to find you can see the fuel/oil stenciling where the armor would have gone, suggesting it was not there. Planning future work, I'll need to replace these crude triangular slabs with actuator rods. I'll probably make them out of brass rod; the vertical part that connects to the flap/aileron might be a little simplified in shape, but I'm not sure of a better way to represent it. I also need to figure out the neatest/cleanest way to cut them off before replacing them without making a mess.

You mean as depicted in the Aires instructions? It seems to fit fine now, but I'll keep my eye on it when it's time to close. Good to know, thanks Also, is there any way to edit the thread title? I have 1/488 instead of 1/48, typo.

I've started working on the venerable Hasegawa Ju-87 along with lots of aftermarket extras. I'll be using the resin cockpit and radiators from Aires, Brassin MG-81Z, elements from Eduard's zoom PE set, and brass 37mm cannon barrels from Master. I've heard mixed reports about if it's possible to display the canopy open or not, so just in case I have sourced a vacuform canopy if I need it for the pilot's sliding section.. The first step is separating the resin cockpit components from their casting blocks and getting them to fit into the fuselage sidewalls. After a lot of sanding material off of the cockpit floor I think I've achieved a good fit. In the blurry background of the image you can see that I also went ahead and assembled the cannon pods before sawing off the plastic gun barrels. The kit comes with no rudder pedals, so I'm using the resin and photoetch that comes with the Aires set to recreate them. As I was working the photoetch parts for the one of the pedals was lost to the carpet monster, so I raided an Eduard Bf-109 kit to steal some plastic pedals to use in their place. Here the cockpit floor is ready to paint. I've added elements like the control column and various levers. The gunner's seat is a combination of the kit seat basket together with resin replacements for the legs and mounting supports. Cockpit is primed and ready to paint. I prefer to use a lighter primer for interior spaces on aircraft, especially if the cockpit will be dark as in this aircraft, to give some better visual contrast. I've also sanded off some areas which will be represented with photoetch from the zoom set. Base coat done with MRP RLM66 and Tamiya German Grey.

Minor problem- I took the masks off, and the side windows have this reflective outline around their borders which looks bad. I guess the best way to fix this would be to mask close to the edge and paint over the area where the window is glued to the solid fuselage?

Decals are now on. I've also done some work with oils on the underside and on the wing roots. As usual my photography skills aren't as good as I would like and some of the color variation is difficult to see on camera.

Thanks. I'm breaking out the CA glue soon to add the exhausts, I'll give it a try. I'm calling the paintwork mostly done. Appologies for the photography, I tried my best to capture the shading/variation in the colors. For weathering, I started with some exhaust stains, hopefully very subtle and faint soot from the machine guns and around the ejection ports, as well as some light dust staining on the wheels and landing gear doors. The gloss coat is currently drying before I add a few decals and begin the rest of the weathering.

Painting of the major markings are now done via stencils. Some minor touch-up work is needed in a few spots, but I am happy with it. I also set to work on the landing gear, added some brake lines.

Stencils on in preparation of painting the roundels and unit markings.

Upper camouflage paint is on. Some areas of over-spray need fixing, but broadly speaking I'm very happy with it. I'll also try to go back and do a light amount of fading and variation to break up the colors a bit, but I think I'm on the right track.