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Hobbyboss 1/48 Mig 17-F


Bordfunker

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I started this kit about 9 months ago thinking it would be a good way to get back into modelling again after moving house.

I thought this would be a nice straightforward modern kit that I could dress up with a little PE and practise my NMF technique.

How wrong can one man be? This kit looks wonderful in the box, but is a complete dog!

The wings just did not want to fit, and for the multi part assembly that makes up the forward fuselage, I'm still in therapy!

However I will not let this kit beat me, and there it will leave the shelf of shame this year.

This is where I am currently.

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Pretty much sorted for painting, with the surfaces polished for NMF.

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The fit of the lower gun bay cover was pants and took loads of sanding and re-scribing before it looked half decent.

I spent this evening popping a lot of the ancillary components on cocktail sticks ready for painting.

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So tonight I bit the bullet and applied several wet coats of Tamiya Tyre Black as a base coat, followed by several more highly thinned coats of Tamiya Gloss Black, thinned with cellulose thinners.

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I still need to gloss the tail end, but I'll do that tomorrow.

The gloss coat has highlighted a visible seam on the aircraft's spine, which I'll need to fix first.

Overall not to bad, so I should be able to press on with a hopefully quick NMF paintjob before Xmas.

Karl

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The 'gloss coat' highlighted a number of areas which needed rectification, most notably a visible seam right along the top of the fuselage, and a number of sink marks on the wings and ailerons.

The seam on the spine was attacked with a Tamiya scriber and a channel gouged out, before thick CA was applied and allowed to harden briefly, before sanding a polishing.

The sink marks instead received a coat of MrSurfacer 500, followed by more vigorous sanding.

This did leave me with a rather piebald looking Mig!

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Which necessitated a coat of Tamiya Rubber Black as a base coat for the sanded areas.

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Not the most startling progress I know, and the matt black paint looks rather messymaybe I should go for a sinister matt black Mig with big red stars! Very Hollywood!

I've give the kit a polish tomorrow, before it receives another gloss coat.

However before I do that I need to fix the seam under the jet pipe which I managed to crack in my sanding of the rest of the airframe.

IMG_20151214_211332.jpg

Oh well, shouldn't be too much trouble, at least it's accessible and out of sight.

Karl

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  • 2 weeks later...

With Xmas out of the way, and a week before I go back to work, it's time to get stuck into the the Mig again.

I have finally managed to eradicate the seams on the underside. In Future I will be inclined to use thick CA for joining the major components on any NMF builds as the liquid poly I used for this build was pants.

I usually use Tamiya Extra Thin but couldn't get any before starting this build.

Anyway, with that out of the way, I rescribed the panel detail that had been lost and then moved onto installing the clear peices, which I assume are engine inspection panels and the landing light.

Given all the sanding of the underside seams the fit of the clear peices was something less than stellar, so these were fixed with Tamiya Extra Thin, and then given a coat of MrSurfacer 1000.

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I'll let that set for an hour or so before sanding it back flush, and then polishing to a shine again.

The landing light fit was better, but again too thick due to all my sanding of the wing roots.

The landing light also lacked anything behind it to suggest a reflector bowl and bulb, so I drilled a slight hole in the light lenses to suggest a bulb, and painted the backing with Tamiya Matt Aluminium.

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Again that can dry off and then it'll be sanded and polished prior to masking.

Karl

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One of the best things about MrSurfacer has to be the quick drying time, therefore I was able to sand the clear parts down and give them a polish this afternoon.

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These were polished up with Micro Mesh polishing cloths and finished off with Micro Mesh polishing compound to give a nice clear finish.

Next up the Eduard masking was re-applied, having already been applied once before I realised how poor the fit was, hence the black!

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Hopefully that lot will look OK, as I can't be bothered with anymore sanding a polishing on this build.

I do hope the Airfix 1/72 Lightning F-6 is less hassle to build.

Karl

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Thanks for the encouragement Mish!

I finally declared myself as satisfied as I was ever likely to be with the seams after yesterday's coat of gloss black, and so moved onto giving the black a polish with Micromesh cloths and some polish.

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At this point I was extremely tempted to just stick the decals on and have a sinister Hollywood style black Mig! It does look very fetching in the gloss black, and it hides a multitude of sins that the NMF will not unfortunately.

So onto the NMF, for which I'll be using Gunze Silver H8 as my base coat. This I find gives a good metallic finish with a finer grade than the Tamiya metallics. As per usual the Gunze was thinned with cellulose thinners which means great adhesion and very quick drying times.

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The silver has highlighted a number of issues with scribing, mainly where it has become too shallow through repeated sanding sessions, but I have a plan for that.

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I never did quite rid myself of that seam under the jet pipe, but now it's hardly noticeable, and even better it's on the underside, so I won't mention if you don't!

I'll probably start masking up some of the panels this evening and spraying some different shades to break up the finish.

Karl

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Thanks guys!

Last night was spent masking up the panels that I wanted to contrast with rest of the airframe.

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That little lot took around 2 hours to mask, and about 10 minutes to spray with Tamiya Titan Silver.

I wasn't completely convinced that the Titan Silver provided sufficient contrast, so left the masking on overnight while I worked out what to do next.

In the cold light of day, I decided to apply Gunze Chrome Silver to selected panels as I wanted something darker, so this was applied to the panels around the cannon.

I then went for a mix of Gunze Silver and Tamiya Gun Metal, which was then sprayed on the panels to the rear of the fuselage, which were likely to be subject to higher temperatures, as well as the leading edges of the fin and stabilisers.

Time to remove the masking.....

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....and what a lot of masking was removed!

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As well as the airframe, I also resprayed some of the ancillary components with the different shades, including the flaps and speed breaks.

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Now everything is being left overnight to fully dry before I mask up the wheel and flap bays ahead of a coat of light blue.

I also need to mask and paint the radome and radar receiver panel, however I'm still not decided on what colour to paint these, so some research will be required.

Karl

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Thanks Mish!

After an apparent hiatus, I've managed to get some more done on the Mig.

One of the biggest short comings of this, apart from the appalling fit, is the lack of detail under the canopy behind the ejector seat.

Now I've been searching online for pics of this area of the airframe for a while without joy, however a Google image search on New Year's Eve turned up a Hungarian site with some excellent walk around pics.

Therefore I decided it was time for a little scratch building to improve the look of the Mig.

First up I traced around the sliding canopy section onto a peice of Tamiya tape.

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This was duly stuck down on a peice of plasticard, and cut out.

Et voilà!

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This was then repeated as I needed a section to cover the deck at the rear of the fuselage, not fancying building straight onto my freshly painted fuselage, and one for the rear of the sliding canopy section.

Next out came the plastic strip and wire to create these two rough approximations of the real components.

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Not perfect, but a big improvement on what wasn't there before.

And this is how they go together.

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Not sure how I'm going to mount the frame to the canopy, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

All the gear bays and doors have been masked ready for painting, along with the flaps and bays, so these should get a coat of pale blue later tonight.

Karl

Edited by Bordfunker
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The Mig is steadily coming together, with attention now focussed on finishing up the minor paintwork such as bays etc.

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Based on what appears to be the unrestored example in Hungary that I found online I went with RLM65 to represent the blue-grey in the wheel bays and cockpit.

I also applied the same to the flaps and gear doors.

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Tonight saw the bright blue of the upper radome masked and sprayed based on the colour call out in the HB painting guide, and pics found on the net. Warsaw Pact operators sure liked to paint their radomes in a variety of colours based on the evidence I've seen!

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As you can see I still need to sort out the area in front of the cockpit as HB provide nothing in what should be a very busy part of the pit.

How the pilot was expected to see out with all that junk in the way?

Karl

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Thanks Mish.

Not a lot of progress this week, however I did make some headway on sorting out the area in front of the IP beneath the canopy.

First came a creative stroll through the spares boxes to find something to dress this area up with.

First up was the gun site, which Hobby Boss have a very anorexic looking item, so this was combined with a spare box from a 1/32 Me 262.

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This was dressed up with lead wire to represent the cables running back to main reflector lens, and some punched styrene to represent the crash pad on the site.

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Next up was the main reflector site and the radar scope. The former is the white item at the front, while the latter was created from another spare 262 component.

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The wires running back from the front flaming to the middle of the pit are in fact de-mist pipes for the canopy.

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As you can also see I had aspot of bother with the paint in front of the canopy, having dropped a blob of Tamyia Extra Thin on it!

This lot was masked and sprayed RLM 65.

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It looks a little rough in close up, but looks better in the flesh.

And here's the gun sight with a coat of gloss black on, ahead of detail painting.

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The damage to the paintwork has been sanded and given a coat of MrSurfacer, and will be allowed to harden for 24 hours before I attempt sanding it back and repainting.

Karl

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Thanks Mish.

I've finally managed to finish the paintwork on the Mig and get all 6 decals on!

Count them, 6 whole decals!

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You can see 2 of them in the above pic, and 2 more in the pic below.

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And the remaining 2....

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Everything has received a coat of clear Tamiya gloss thinned with cellulose thinners, including a few of the smaller components.

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All that can harden off before I start applying an oil wash.

Karl

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That's looking brilliant! Really nice metallic work considering you've gone the acrylic route rather than Alclad paints. It really is looking great.

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Thanks Mark.

Paints are mixture of Tamiya & Gunze metalics, all thinned with cellulose thinners, which helps them go on nicely and dry very hard.

I keep meaning to try Alclad as I've got the set up to spray these safely now.

Maybe for the next NMF I try.

Thanks Bish, almost there now.

Last night did a few touch ups to the paintwork, then gave everything a further coat of Tamiya clear gloss.

Tonight has seen the oil wash go on, but no pics I'm afraid.

Karl

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This morning saw the oil wash being buffed off, and any areas that had been missed addressed.

All of which left me with a Mig looking like this.

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I took the opportunity to attach the undercarriage in order to protect the finish.

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I had intended to dry brush the wheel and flap bays before attaching anything but got carried away with the excitement of this build being almost complete!

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I will dry brush everything before I attach the flaps and nose gear doors.

And for the first time with the yellow domed radar cover installed, which incidentally didn't fit very well without a bit of fettling.

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I also attached the jet pipe, which had previously been painted with Tamiya Dark Iron, which I think looks great for heat stressed metal.

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The flaps also got an oil wash, and just need dry brushing and a coat of matt before they get fitted.

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And finally the air brakes, which are just awaiting final fitting.

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Hopefully another couple of days should see this build complete, after which focus can switch back to the U-boat.

Karl

Edited by Bordfunker
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Thanks Mish.

Unfortunately work has taken precedence this week, with only limited time at the bench.

However this build is slowly drawing to a close, with the aim to complete it this weekend.

I've finally finished up the forward cockpit area, installing the main gun sight as well as the ejector seat.

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For some reason the Mig I've used as a reference has two reflector sights, as well as the big radar scope. Not sure why but it makes for a busy coaming.

Next up was installing the air brakes. Now Hobbyboss provide absolutely no way of securely mounting these, I really don't know what they were thinking. Fortunately I foresaw this little issue and drilled both the brakes themselves and the fuselage to take a length of wire when I first started on this kit.

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Once that dried off, I added the hydraulic rams, shortening the oleos to make them fit within the teardrop fairing on the brake itself.

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Next up were flaps and drop tanks, which went on easily with some thick CA.

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And her she is on her undercarriage, still minus wheels, but with the forward canopy attached with PVA.

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As you cal see I've dirtied her up a bit with a very thin overspray of dilute Tamiya Smoke along the panel lines, and in all those places second generation jets got mucky!

Edited by Bordfunker
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