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Sri Lankan MiG-17


Foxbat

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Having stuck my main Tiger build in the STGB gallery, I find myself with an almost manageable work load so the obvious answer was to start another model. I'd mentioned this one in chat but no one took the bait so I was left with no option but to build it myself.

 

As far as I can find, the Soviet Union provided four MiG-17 Fresco A in 1971 that the Sri Lankan air force used as ground attack aircraft during the insurgency. I'm going to portray one of these aircraft as it looked whilst still in service in 1984.

 

The kit is a Dragon reissue, right down to the box art. It is either a nice little kit or unbuildable rubbish (due to being vastly underscale) depending on which review you choose. Since options for the early, non-afterburning small air brake version are thin on the ground it will have to do.

 

The box:

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The sprues (so nearly singular). Wonder if the later versions ever saw light of day? That would explain the split fuselage.

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And the decals. I've not found any evidence for the air brakes being part red so mine won't be which saves a major headache trying to match the colour.

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Andy

Back in my (dis)comfort zone

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1 minute ago, exdraken said:

great choice!

 

I did a Sri Lankian Kfir once :) interesting airforce and different colors! :thumbsup2:

They do look good. I'd love to do one of their MiG-27s sometime too, but they arrived way too late for this GB.

 

Andy

 

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6 minutes ago, Foxbat said:

They do look good. I'd love to do one of their MiG-27s sometime too, but they arrived way too late for this GB.

 

Andy

 

yeah!  I fear there are no decals out there in 48th.......  :( 

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12 minutes ago, exdraken said:

yeah!  I fear there are no decals out there in 48th.......  :( 

The first roundels were standard colours but quite small. Would 1/72 ones be close enough?

 

These ones might also work if you fancy one of the other schemes on the F-7 (I'd like to do most of them). F-7G

 

Andy

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6 minutes ago, modelling minion said:

This really is a great choice Andy and really captures the spirit of what I wanted from this GB, a fairly standard subject but finished in the markings of an unusual operator.

Don't bother too much with the reviews, just build the kit and enjoy it.

That's my plan. Just don't tell Serge ;)

 

Andy

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1 hour ago, Hewy said:

I've  never seen this little kit built before andy,i see the fuselage halves are split  toward the rear too, is there an engine in the kit?

No engine. I assume it was done so they could also produce the Fresco C with the afterburner and bigger air brakes. Scalemates says they released the J-5 with different parts at the same time so maybe the other rear fuselage was in that boxing?

 

Andy

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First few sub-assemblies are together. Fit is mostly OK but not as positive as I would like - I've only had to use a tiny bit of filler but first I had to find it as I hadn't used any on my last couple of builds. I've also been wafting a paintbrush around, so there will be more progress to show this evening.

 

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Lots of lovely panel lines and rivets crying out for washes but all my reference pictures point to these airframes being both quite clean and sun bleached so I'll have to have a think on the best way to pop the detail without making it horribly overdone.

 

Andy

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Great start Andy.

For what is actually quite an old kit ( first released in 1994 ) it looks pretty good to me.

I think you are right in that the airframes were kept in pretty good condition from the few pictures I've seen of them so i think that subtle weathering is the order of the day.

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This build is turning out to be incredibly rapid. I painted and decalled the cockpit and decided against adding seat belts as the entire seat is narrower than my Tamiya tape and yet is stall as wide as the cockpit opening so there will be close to nothing to see. 

 

That done, I installed the pit and closed up the forward fuselage. Couldn't see any reason not to keep going, so that's what I did. All flying surfaces are now attached too. I did wonder if I was going to need a little smear of filler at the wing roots so put  a bit of paint on the check and that kind of got me to this point. 

 

It looks fairly complete but this is where the detail work that takes all the time kicks in. Still, I'm pleased with where I've got to. Had time left over to paint the dining room too. I'll put another coat on everything tomorrow, just have to remember silver for the MiG, red for the walls and I'll be fine :) 

 

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Andy

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I needed something to both tone down the bright silver of the paint so far and provide some subtle panel line colouring. I was using Vallejo gun metal for some detail painting so a wash with that seemed the obvious choice. It worked, at least to the naked eye - flash photography has bleached most of it back out which is a kind of tribute to it not being overdone.

 

I fancied sticking some decals on next, just because I could. Oh dear. Oh very dear indeed. Don't you just hate it when your brand new after market decals do this on contact with water?

 

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Fortunately I'm really disorganised, and I discovered I had another copy of this decal sheet in the bottom of a draw. It's donkeys years old but behaved much better (still not perfect though :( ) so I managed to get most of the national markings on. Which means I'm now here:

 

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I'm leaving it there for tonight. More fun and games in the morning when I'm fresh.

 

Andy

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26 minutes ago, Foxbat said:

Oh dear. Oh very dear indeed. Don't you just hate it when your brand new after market decals do this on contact with water?

 

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Ouch 😳 now that hurts to see. Its a good thing with the second sheet. This is the Carpena brand for future reference. Im planning on buying a couple of there sets.  

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5 minutes ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Ouch 😳 now that hurts to see. Its a good thing with the second sheet. This is the Carpena brand for future reference. Im planning on buying a couple of there sets.  

It is Carpena. To be fair, the original sheet came with a resin nose and instructions for rescribing the air brake to back date the KP MiG-17PF kit to a Fresco A so it's entirely possible the entire run of this sheet is more than 20 years old and not a reflection of the current state of their art. I would find someone with a more recent sheet for an opinion before I bought any more of their stuff though.

 

Andy

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4 hours ago, exdraken said:

The scheme certainly looks good!

Hope you can sort the decals!

Still working on it. All the national markings are on now - although we'll skip over how I managed to get the only complete decal onto the other side of the fin upside down, and how second attempt broke up a bit and had to be patched :D

 

Just hope the red flashes for the nose and drop tanks behave. 

 

Andy

For once my fists of ham aren't the limiting factor.

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Well, the tank decals mostly behaved - took all four to get something passable in place. The serials were a different matter - the good ones had to be put together like a jigsaw and look like they were drawn on by a drunk 3 year old using a crayon :wall:

 

Print scale do a sheet with one of the other Sri Lankan machines on. Might have to cut my losses and invest, just for the serials, and add some of the other interesting schemes to my pile of potential Airfix builds - is 20 MiG-17s too many? 😂

 

Andy

Struggling on

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6 minutes ago, Foxbat said:

Well, the tank decals mostly behaved - took all four to get something passable in place. The serials were a different matter - the good ones had to be put together like a jigsaw and look like they were drawn on by a drunk 3 year old using a crayon :wall:

 

Print scale do a sheet with one of the other Sri Lankan machines on. Might have to cut my losses and invest, just for the serials, and add some of the other interesting schemes to my pile of potential Airfix builds - is 20 MiG-17s too many? 😂

 

Andy

Struggling on

Your decals really are giving you grief aren't they Andy, its even more of a pain as she had gone together so well and so quickly.

 

Is 20 Mig-17's too many? Certainly not in my book, there are lots of great schemes for them and they were operated all round the World so if anything 20 is quite conservative :) .

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On 8/6/2019 at 12:22 AM, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

Thats no bueno Craig... I'm really interested in two sets by them. Maybe if i coat them with Microscale decal-fix . 

I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt yesterday but I'm done. If you can find the schemes you want to do from anyone else, anyone at all then that's the way to go. 

 

Andy

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