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Hobbyboss Mig-15UTi: Finished


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After nearly three months of malaise I've kick started the mojo with a simple build and learning some new modelling voodoo: I'm doing a quickish build with this,

boxtops.jpg

 

As I want to practice masking camo and I had no cockpit details, I'm using the decals for this scheme and the cockpit interior decals (Eduard thoughtfully provide some excellent interior colour etch as well). BTW Algeria has an Air Force? Last time I went they seemed to have embraced the technological revolution we call a goat...

profischeme.jpg

 

Seeing as everyone has gone nuts over this primer, I invested in some as well:

primer.jpg

 

And I'm trying my own paint voodoo involving various acrylics/lacquers and levelling thinners that I call Mr El Cheapo! This will involve finally spraying everything with something called fadeout thinners that should wonderfully level all the paint or melt the whole thing into a blob of styrene, both good.

mrelcheapo.jpg

Lastly, in a belated attempt to extend my diminishing years I invested in this extremely expensive extractor unit:

benchvent.jpg

 

What could possibly go wrong?

A

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A leisurely day at Southsea, but got the 'pit painted and decaled

panels.jpg:

Assembled some teeny tiny belts replete with microscopic buckles, a zen hour of threading strips of miilmetre thin tape slivers through tiny sub millimetre gaps. Turns out I did go to Specsavers...

belts.jpg

Of course, the fun will start tomorrow when I try and persuade said micro-belts to attach themselves to the painted seats. My paint experiment went well as the Mr El Cheapo home brew worked incredibly well, a few shakes of the lava bead filled jar, into the airbrush and drizabone 1 hour later. New extractor is a honey and I even took off my respirator while spraying the Mr Levelling thinned paint and nary a whiff.

The Stynylez worked as well as I expected but I drove myself crazy trying to clean my H&S, 99.99% IPA, followed by gun thinners did it eventually then I found a neat video on Ultimate's site- it turns out I need to get a brush in there. This pleases me as Phil Flory rails against the normal practise of backflushing and I'm now convinced that it will destroy not only my seals, but civilisation as we know it.

Being a recidivist, I resorted to my "home made Alclad grey" and finished off the intake with an insouciant blast or two of Alclad aluminium, god I love things with nasty VOCs in 'em...

intake.jpg

As the GF is away, its Tandoori mixed grill and Peroni nite, while taking in 4 episodes of the Expanse....All is well.

A

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Belts actually co-operated and went on with the merest dab of Gators extra thin:

belts.jpg

Pit was glued in and a few dabs of Future to gloss the dials, worked surprisingly well for a cheap and cheerful fix without harming any Pavla resin:

pit.jpg

Hobby boss leave a lovely hole for a gunsight but provide nowt, so I blasted some Aries K14 sights with black Stylnylrez, amazing what these Czech elves can make with their tiny little fingers. Moreover it will fill said hole and look "gunsight-ish".

k14.jpg

Adieu et bonne nuit, mes braves.

A

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How's the fit of this kit overall?

I have the hobbyboss 15 bis fagot in the stash, and the detail looks really nice, but the cockpit is pretty basic and sparse

I'll be assembling it today, I can see some gaps in the wing/fuse area but the fuselage halves seem fine. When you come to do your HB Fagot, check in with me as I have a few Eduard Mig-15 Profis and can send you the cockpit decals.

A

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Now for the fun bits, I knew by reading some interweb stuff that these airbrakes weren't going to do me proud, actually they were too damn proud:

brake1.jpg

Apart from the mismatched shape, there was a lot of surface "detail" that prevented any hope of a flush fit:

brake2.jpg

Perfect time to try these babies out and they made short work of the ribbing:

detail.jpg

A little bit more tweaking with Vincent's excellent micro files:

refined.jpg

And the fit was good enough to take some light filler for the next stage but still show some outline detail:

brokenin.jpg

Now Matt asked about the general fit and I put some of the horror stories about the wing to fuselage gap out of my mind but here it is, welcome to the Grand Canyons Of Hobbyboss, sheesh, you can see daylight through those chasms:

grandcanyon.jpg

Me worried? Nah, tried something on my Hokeyboss F-5E build that worked a treat:

mindthegap.jpg

Gently softened with Mr Hobby Cement S and nudged in with a flattened cocktail stick:

intothegap.jpg

And repeated on the other side:

outofthegap.jpg

That's quite enough, time to let everything harden and some serious superglue filling and sanding beckons, my high power daylight bulbs have shown me at least four big sink marks...and Matt, don't be in a rush for those Eduard decals, my stash is in sixteen large boxes in me Mum's attic.

Now the sun is out, wine bars are open and soon my gorgeous hottie redhead will be home, a man's mind turns to other things than mere styrene.

A

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That's a neat solution to the wing root gaps. I've got a mig-29 on the bench with similar gaps, and you've just presented me with the solution. That airbrake seemed a trying little piece, almost as if it was designed to be only displayed open.

This is turning out to be an excellent build, and will be bookmarked for future reference.

Matt

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Another small update: Seams superglued, zipkicked, sanded and checked. Canopy is now on. Also a world exclusive reveal of the "AzureClamp", a cunning point-yer-model-in-any-bleeding-direction-instantly tool !! ( May have been possibly inspired by the now defunct Bos Clamp"):

azureclamp.jpg

Another new thing: Glue 'N Glaze, apparently its yet another PVA/Acrylic that dries clear but apparently it "etches" into plastic and paint. Would like an alternative to Odourless Cyano that I normally use.

gluenglaze.jpg

Big gap at rear of the canopy,

canopy1.jpg

Smaller one at front,

canopy2.jpg

I'll let it sit for a day and then try using the Glue 'n glaze as a filler and superglue fill/sand the rear. Overall not a bad fit but you'd be better off removing the canopy mounting lugs instead of laboriously filing them to fit like I did. Decided against fiddling with the gun sight, this is a quick build and I've spent many days in the past manoeuvring micro blobs of resin and trimming minute slivers of clear gun sight glass: The belts were my AMS fix. Now for a sundowner.

A

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That's a neat solution to the wing root gaps. I've got a mig-29 on the bench with similar gaps, and you've just presented me with the solution. That airbrake seemed a trying little piece, almost as if it was designed to be only displayed open.

This is turning out to be an excellent build, and will be bookmarked for future reference.

Matt

Its definitely only meant to be an open airbrake. BTW You can get the Plastruct in square section that might look better?

A

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  • 2 weeks later...

A brief delay when I noticed my Eduard mask set did not fit: Where's the bit that says "UTI" after "Mig-15"? Doh! The right set was duly obtained through the speedy services of Hannants:

masky.jpg

A swift blast or two of the pre-mixed Mr. El Cheapo H308 and we have the canopy interior colour ready.

masked.jpg

Tomorrow beckons for a good day of fettling and priming.

A

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A minor update while I faff with prepainting and attaching the tailplanes: I wanted to use the the long standard drop tanks but HB fail to provide the rear pylon. It should look like this. So a length of stryrene rod was glued in and will be trimmed to get the right angle and so much so for accuracy

pylon1.jpg

pylon2.jpg

Thanks for looking, peeps.

A

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  • 2 weeks later...

Wot? No progress? leapt into action and preshaded then applied a mist coat of Mr El Cheapo C323:

under.jpg

Then a swift mask and pre-shade with my new modelling best buddy- Mr Paint Basic black

top.jpg

First time I've managed to spray (very wobbly) 1mm lines... amazing stuff but its only acrylic paint with voodoo cellulose thinners apparently.

mrpaintblack.jpg

Full of unfounded confidence, I may even attempt freehand camo tomorrow :banghead:

A

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A wee update: It turns out even a cack handed buffoon can paint freehand camo given enough practise:

freehand1.jpg

freehand2.jpg

Not perfect but most of the pre-shade has survived, I've got reasonable definition and the paint is roughly where its supposed to be. A big thank you to Batcode who told me the secret is "to use the airbrush like a pen" @ SMW 2015. With my super thin Mr El Cheapo mix and less that 5 psi I can get to within 1 cm from the model without any nasties happening thanks to the Harder and Steenbeck pre-set handle. Only problem is, it takes ages , like a watercolour, building up layers and filling outlines but I'm in love with my airbrush!

A

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A strange day, just had a stream of personal abuse from newbie who cant read the rules on this forum and got his post deleted, so decided to get back to modelling and post the latest updates. Freehand camo was most enjoyable and touch-ups a breeze. Gloss coated and Eduard decals were a joy despite my using using micro sol not set to place them :banghead:

decaltop.jpg

Masked and sprayed the wheel wells.

wells.jpg

Tomorrow is final gloss coat and panel lining.

A

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The end of the week has seen a little more action. Ran some dark brown oil wash in to the panel lines but erred on the side of subtlety. Then some new stuff for matt coating: Mr Hobby Flat (already turned into pre-thinned Mr El Cheapo Flat):

mrflat.jpg

Worked like a dream, applied thin passes then backing off on the needle and drying each pass gave me a lovely dead flat in seconds. No frosting or spraying issues. Even restored my preshade and popped the panels. Having suffered Alclad matt cotes, Vallejo, Winsor & Newton, something a mate of Mike's knocks up with left over washing up liquid etc. this was a revelation:

under.jpg

Canopy masking was successful with minimal chipping and no paint creep- a first for me. Thank you Mr Eduard (or is it Mr Sulc?)

unmasked.jpg

Emboldened by my success, I even wasted thirty minutes, masking then priming, polishing and Alclad spraying a nice shiny pitot. I hate the smeary blobby look of painted on silver and aluminium when I spent so much time getting a good airbrushed finish. What's thirty minutes after nearly a month and with a Harder & Steenbeck clean up is a matter of minutes with some gun thinners.

pitot.jpg

Well now is the dreaded time of prepping the undercarriage , gear doors and aerials that always seem to make my interest wane, hopefully my Hobby Elements flash sanders should make this a simple job...but will I be brave enough to try my new Uschi ultrafine rigging thread for the aerial?

A

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Well as my Mojo has shimmied back, I found all the bits for this and restarted it:

 

Eduard landing light for the hole HB provide

 

light.jpg

 

Totally fictitious sight glass and filler for slipper tanks

 

tank.jpg

 

Final bits, painted and washed.

 

bits.jpg

 

This should see the finish line next week after a years delay, so much so for a quick build....

 

A

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