One Kosciuszko Hero and a Slovak Tiger!

[Lightningboy2000]

I purchased a couple of Caracal 1/72 sheets earlier in the year & like many who most likely have attended RIAT and some overseas shows over the past few years, I have wanted to build at least one.

Now that I've finished a couple of long term WW2 builds, it is time to explore a faster, noisier and much more modern subject.

These are a few of my pics of Red 56 from RIAT 2015

The only aftermarket i'll be using will be the Caracal decal sheets. The main undercarriage legs look a little iffy and I would have liked to obtain the SAC replacement legs, but that would cost me another £28.00 just for some little bits of metal, so I will drill out and reinforce the existing main legs with brass rod.

 

Title edit alert!!! It seems that this Heroes thing is rather popular and everyone is doing the same thing, especially Red 56.

I've decided that my "UB" version will be the twin seat Slovak Tiger as seen at a few air shows since 2008.

Coincidentally it can be added to my slowly expanding collection of Tiger Meet aircraft. Was, or is there a Tiger Meet group build, also is there a Tiger Meet S.I.G.?

If anyone can tell me which year this scheme originated I would be gratefull! I have ordered a Kopro sheet which represents this airframe.

 

 

 

 

Cheers everybody

Martin

[FortyEighter]

Some useful photos - will certainly be coming back to them when I get my 48th version to the painting stage 

 

Regards

 

Mike

[Lightningboy2000]

By all means Mike, I might add a few more later on in the build.

I've a few more here..https://flic.kr/s/aHskjkZ9bJ

Martin

[Jabba]

Nice pictures and welcome to the heroes club.

[Lightningboy2000]

5 hours ago, Jabba said:

Nice pictures and welcome to the heroes club.

Cheers Jabba, though a slight alteration as I think there's too many heroes hanging out. I prefer a bit of variety!

 

Martin

[FortyEighter]

Hi Martin

 

This new choice of scheme should look good!

 

Mike

[Jabba]

Nice choice of other scheme.

[Lightningboy2000]

Made a small start to the two airframes.

Painted up the cockpits and added the cockpit decals. All mating surfaces for building up the cockpits have to be paint free, also any mold seams on the small parts have to be sanded off to fit correctly, namely the sidewalls. On the twin seater, the cockpit is supposed to be attached to the bottom half of the molded fuselage by two pins. These do not align during dry fitting so I found it easier to cut the pins off and glue the cockpit tub to the upper fuselage.

Just a little bit of work & that's it for now.

I think these decals are adequate for the scale..

 

 

[trickyrich]

Welcome aboard Martin, nice to see something a bit different as well. The Polish scheme does seem to be very popular one so I'm glad you're going for a Tiger Meet one.

 

As far as I can tell this scheme was for the 2011 Tiger Meet where they were observers with some limited flying. She was accompanied by the Digital MiG-29AS 0619, which if I can get my masks in time I'm doing.

 

You've made a great start to her, the cockpit looks great.

 

Well good luck with the build, hope you enjoy it and I look forward to seeing her in the gallery.

 

 

 

(A Tiger Meet SIG would be good, so far I have 4 either built, building or awaiting: Polish F-16CJ, French Mirage 2000C, Slovak MiG-29AS, Czech Gripen and possibly a German Tornado)

[FortyEighter]

Your cockpit look fantastic - are the dials painted or decals?

[Lightningboy2000]

23 hours ago, trickyrich said:

Welcome aboard Martin, nice to see something a bit different as well. The Polish scheme does seem to be very popular one so I'm glad you're going for a Tiger Meet one.

 

As far as I can tell this scheme was for the 2011 Tiger Meet where they were observers with some limited flying. She was accompanied by the Digital MiG-29AS 0619, which if I can get my masks in time I'm doing.

 

You've made a great start to her, the cockpit looks great.

 

Well good luck with the build, hope you enjoy it and I look forward to seeing her in the gallery.

 

 

 

(A Tiger Meet SIG would be good, so far I have 4 either built, building or awaiting: Polish F-16CJ, French Mirage 2000C, Slovak MiG-29AS, Czech Gripen and possibly a German Tornado)

Thanks Rich, the Tiger Meet scheme in my first photo is from Farnborough 2008 & yes it accompanied a digital schemed single seater which was 0619, so much earlier than 2011, I'm certain it's been around for a long time. If you're doing masks, it must be in a larger scale then I presume? I bit too daunting for me in 1/72, but after seeing the Ukraine Su-27 digital scheme the other week, I might just try that some time.

Cheers

Martin

[Lightningboy2000]

11 hours ago, FortyEighter said:

Your cockpit look fantastic - are the dials painted or decals?

Cheers FortyEighter, they are the kit decals over a painted mix of H65 and a little H127 as the real thing is painted in a light blue/grey finish.

Check out the color of the cockpits in the current upgraded Romanian MiG-21's which are painted the same color.

After spending too much on kits this year I'm trying not to include too much after market stuff like the Eduard cockpit stuff. I did use a lot of Micro Sol to make the decals sink into the circular recessed dials. I also had to cut the instruments up to make them fit the seperate areas. I don't think they're 100% accurate as these airframes have the multifunction displays in them.

 

Thanks

Martin

[Lightningboy2000]

Just received this decal sheet in the post.

I am a bit peeved that the tiger stripes are printed as a very dark grey, almost black. I'm tempted to just paint on the stripes in the correct grey.

As can be seen in the detail photos I posted above Kopro have clearly got it wrong.

[trickyrich]

Oooo that's not good at all, they're way too dark. I have the same issue with the "digital" decals for mine, the colours are completely wrong and too dark.

 

The only way I could think to get around this, other than decals from someone else (and probably no one does them), is to apply just the strips then carefully mist over a really thinned down coat of the base colour. Us this to try and lighten them up a bit. It'll take some careful airbrushing, but not impossible to do, just make sure you have a clear coat on first. Even a slightly lighter colour could give you some really cool weathered/faded look?

[Lightningboy2000]

1 minute ago, trickyrich said:

Oooo that's not good at all, they're way too dark. I have the same issue with the "digital" decals for mine, the colours are completely wrong and too dark.

 

The only way I could think to get around this, other than decals from someone else (and probably no one does them), is to apply just the strips then carefully mist over a really thinned down coat of the base colour. Us this to try and lighten them up a bit. It'll take some careful airbrushing, but not impossible to do, just make sure you have a clear coat on first. Even a slightly lighter colour could give you some really cool weathered/faded look?

I was thinking the same, but I brush paint though. Not sure what I will do yet, I could photocopy the stripes and use that to make a mask to brush paint. Can't be too hard to cut masks and paint. I haven't yet researched what grey I should use. I thought maybe it was something similar to the upper dark grey used on the Kosciuszko aircraft, but in my photos that still looks too dark.

[Lightningboy2000]

Just inserted plasticard to represent the upper fuselage intake vanes closed as they are usually seen static.

These little things always take me ages to do & this is just the one airframe so far. Making a square hole, then cutting a piece of plastic to fit exactly without any gaps. Glad that's done, now I can insert some nose weight then get the upper and lower fuselage parts glued together.