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Mig-25RBT from ICM in 1:48


Mike

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It had to happen, didn't it?  I get a brand new Mig-25 in for review from those delightful folks at ICM, and next thing you know, the box just falls onto my desk, and all the cockpit parts jump out of the open box.  How did that happen?  Dunno, don't care, but I'm building it.  I've not got very far with it so far, as it's been a tad busy here recently, so here are a few pics of the cockpit now that it's together.  The parts are glued into the fuselage halves where appropriate, and not glued yet where it makes the painting easier.  The seat is also constructed, and I'll be raiding the Eduard PE for the old (AHEM!) one for some seatbelts, and maybe a few other odds & sods that might fit this kit.  Not too much though, as I don't want to spoil the "out of box" nature of the build.

 

My friends are sick of hearing this, but so far the parts are just falling together with very little effort.  Things just fit... with one exception, which is a teeny little knob on the port sidewall, which needed its socket expanding a little with a drill in a pin-vice... once I'd swept it up off the floor that is.  Old butter-fingers strikes again :dull:

 

Anyway - primer next, and then some of that nice AKAN Russian interior green that got a bit scarce when the AMK Mig-31 came out.  If you're going to need some, get onto Martin @ Atlantic Models, and get your oar in early.  I hope whoever it was that I nabbed the last bottle from last time has forgiven me by now :blush:   A couple of pics.  Remember - loosely taped together for the lulz:

 

cockpit1.jpg

 

cockpit2.jpg

 

I have a feeling I'm going to be enjoying this build somewhat ^_^

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Hi Mike,

 

That looks rather tasty!

By the way. what is the clear cube; kit part, secret Russian doo-dah, scale variance, modelling thingy...?

 

On-On,

 

Christian, exiled to africa

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:lol: it's just a piece of clear acrylic that I sometimes use to help balance things when I'm taking photos.  This one needed an additional blob of blutak though, as it wasn't very keen on staying where I put it at the time :boom:

 

I had a little more time at the bench yesterday evening, and put some of the main sub-assemblies together that will need a dab of paint before I put the fuselage together.  The main bays are just three parts each, but they fit together like a glove, and don't be tempted to remove the ejector pin marks on the location tabs.  They actually improve the fit between the parts as I found out when I took the first lot off, and left the 2nd lot in place.  Quite a thoughtful placement :)  There is one mark on the wall of the main bays, but as it stands proud of the styrene, it was a piece of cake to shave off and sand back flat.  A word on the plastic though.  It is quite soft, so be mindful when you're sanding or cutting so it doesn't get away from you.  Next were the intakes, and those went together easily, and I used the weird shaped bulkhead to hold those at the correct angles while the glue was setting, as if you just do 'em by eye, you could be storing up trouble for yourself later on. 

 

The intake trunking parts each have 2 small ejector pin marks, so those were puttied up and left overnight, while the exhaust trunking have rather a few more.  There are four recessed pin marks in each semi-cylindrical part, plus another 2-4 raised pips.  The latter are easy to remove with a sharp blade, but the former need a little putty.  I added it sparingly with a modelling tool to avoid drowning the ribbing, then as it was going off, I used the same tool dipped in Tamiya Extra Thin to shape the putty so that it was somewhere near the correct profile.  Looking at it now after allowing it to cure overnight, and it seems to have worked pretty well, needing just a little sanding to finish the job.

 

I also built up the nose cone with the recce insert, minus the glazing at this stage, as I'll need to check the colouring of the "things" behind the lenses before I install them.  The exhaust cans were cut from the sprues and test-fitted, with a promising level of detail that will be augmented by the petals when they're added.

 

No pics as yet, as I wasn't planning on posting until Christian replied, but my desk is looking a bit busy with parts now.  Oh, and I also made up the main wheels.  They fit really nicely together (big surprise!) and I managed to get a weld-bead all round the join to simplify the clean-up.  A bit of sanding coming up, then primar and finally some paint! ^_^

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I've had chance to do a bit more on this yesterday and today, so there's a bit more to show for my efforts.  The exhaust trunks are now painted, and ready to go together, having been primed with black gloss, then some Alclad Gun Metal mixed with Pale Burnt Metal, both of which have started to go "off", as Alclads seem to do, making them hard to spray without first strain out the lumps :S  After that I gave the trunk a dust coat of Tamiya buff with a couple of drops of NATO brown, masked up the centre section, and gave it another dusting to create a bit of difference between the sections.  In a fit of madness, I then dotted little details on each valley at the front & rear of the outermost section, as seen in some of my references.  Also in my refs were green centres to the afterburner ring, which adds a little interest.  I matted down the ring, but left the rear engine face gloss to give them a bit of contrast.  I'll glue those up and never see all that effort again now I've taken a few pics :doh:

 

exhausts1.jpg

 

I've also built up the exhaust nozzle, although I've not yet painted anything there, as I initially started assembly out of curiosity for the most part.  I constructed the inner ring, then the outer, finding out later that it was tricky getting one inside the other!  Don't do that, as it's a bit fraught for a minute there :rolleyes: I'm going to spray the cans then hand paint the inner petals green, weathering them as per some references just for fun :)

 

exhausts2.jpg

 

The intakes, their trunking, main gear bays and nose gear bays are also painted, while the cockpit is still languishing in primer for some reason. :shrug:

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Agreed :) I believe that there's a pod under the nose needed (no-one and nothing is perfect), so I'm going to butcher mine to adapt it, but otherwise it's a lovely piece of plastic engineering :thumbsup:

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I've got some of these arriving this week and I will really have to resist the urge to get the bits to jump out of the box like they did for you. It looks like a brilliant kit. I'll be watching this with a lot of interest.

 

Duncan B

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I know what you mean. :) I wonder how much more difficult it is to copy & paste a shape, rather than mirror it?  Anyone with CAD experience care to opine?

 

Last night finished off with some more assemblies being built up, such as the intake trunks, the panel line washes and weathering on the intakes themselves, plus the first two steps in building the bulge under the nose of this beast.  I started off with a rough shape for the base of the hump, and then added sections of some recently rediscovered 30+ year old styrene sheet to make up the basic shape, then moved on to a chunk of milliput, using the base as my guide, and smoothing off the steps between layers.  Once it was roughly covered, I attacked it with a wet modelling tool, smoothing it to shape to reduce the sanding workload later.  I propped it upside down on blutak triangles overnight to avoid ruining my efforts, and this morning it's fairly well set up.  I'm going to leave it a bit though, as it was cold last night, which seems to slow down curing times a bit.

 

nose1.jpg

 

nose2.jpg

 

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3 hours ago, Mike said:

I know what you mean. :) I wonder how much more difficult it is to copy & paste a shape, rather than mirror it?  Anyone with CAD experience care to opine?

 

Pretty much the same number of mouse clicks - ie 4 or 5.

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2 hours ago, Mike said:

wonder how much more difficult it is to copy & paste a shape, rather than mirror it?  Anyone with CAD experience care to opine?

It's pretty darn hard, at least in AutoCAD...it involves moving the mouse to the left slightly.

32755512951_7ec88074c4_o

 

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Alignment with other shapes/surfaces/solids can become sources of trouble when copying instead of mirroring, in particular when either your duplicate object or the target objects aren't totally symmetrical. When you mirror, all shapes, positions and relative positions to other objects remain exactly the same. When copying, you sometimes then need to add alignment aids such as lines or surfaces in order to get the object positioned correctly. But nothing that will add more than 10 minutes to the operation.

In this case I guess the mistake happened because the two turbine disks are connected in the middle into one single part. I think they drew one side completely including the backing plastic and half of the connecting tab and then mirrored. They should have treated the backing plastic and the turbine detail separately - mirror the flat plastic part and copy one complete turbine over to the other side.

J

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2 hours ago, Atlis said:

That's why I am wondering if Mike is going to do the nose correction too.

 

I wasn't planning on it, no.  I don't know enough about the discrepancy to be able to do anything about it at this stage, and I'm already drifting away from my OOB(ish) brief. :blush: Your styrene parts put mine to shame - mine were all over the place :unsure:

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After the first sanding of the nose, I squirted a little bit of primer on it, and there was a bit of a low patch where the pencil hatching is, so it went back in the Milliput barn last night for another dab.  I also finished off the blending of the recessed panel just forward of it, which I'd previously filled with CA.

 

nose3.jpg

 

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looks good, try to test-fit the front with the cockpit section from time to time...

I did not add the recce pallet yet on mine , in order to have better access to nose an cockpit fit!

 

 

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1 hour ago, davmarx said:

Hi Mike, well done! :goodjob:

 

I'm really "in the mood" with Mig-25 RBT, at the present moment, but I'm a little lazy so I ordered the new nose from "Cold War Studio"... Shame on me!:blush:

 

Ciao.

Davide

certainly a good decision considering you also get a representative instrument decals and masks!

would have done the same if I hadn't started much earlier! (and decided to do an early Foxbat for that ;))

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2 hours ago, davmarx said:

... Shame on me!:blush:

 

Absolutely not! :D No shame in using aftermarket if it's available, but I wanted to keep it as close to OOB as I could.  A bit of styrene sheet & filler is definitely closer than an aftermarket set :innocent:

 

I've been a bit slow this last few days due to having a flare-up and no energy, but I've been pottering about painting this & that when I get moments of lucidity :wacko:  I should have something to show for it shortly, and am about to start working on the detail painting of the cockpit.  Much fiddliness :nerd:

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13 hours ago, Mike said:

 

Absolutely not! :D No shame in using aftermarket if it's available ...

You are right, but I like to scratch these details with my own hands, if I am able to do it...  :D

Sadly I've a little free time in these months because I'm working on a Phantom RF-4E Italeri 1/48 on an italian forum, it's more or less half the way and there's still more to do, you can imagine...

If it's interesting for somebody I can post a link but I don't know if I may...

 

Ciao.

Davide

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