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1/144 Eduard MiG-21bis Angola


spejic

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I've cleared my workspace for an aircraft in the A-4 groupbuild, but I'm finding I'm having a lot of downtime waiting for things to dry so I decided to dig something out that might be quick and easy. Hopefully the Eduard MiG-21bis is it. Here's what it looked like at the start of the day:

 

CnLsP2i.jpg

 

No work has been done - it was in pieces because I wanted to put the big sprue in a small container some time ago. No box picture because it was one of those single-aircraft in a bag releases. I have the JBR African Fishbeds decal set and plan to do an Angolan aircraft mostly because it has a simple but high-contrast paint scheme and through some bad luck for Angola but good luck for modellers everywhere a single example ended up in a South African museum so there are plenty of reference pictures.

 

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25 minutes ago, TonyOD said:

That must be tiny! Enjoy!

Yes, not just a tiny scale, but the aircraft itself is surprisingly small compared to other aircraft. I'm learning a lot about MiG-21's from this build.

 

For example, did you know the MiG-21 had this structure called a "tail"? You may have noticed it wasn't in the parts above. Once I found out this little-known-fact, I went looking and soon found the tail sprue in a different container.

 

It's going really fast so far. The fit is stupendous - probably the best I've experienced since the 1/144 Revell AH-64D. I've done some subassemblies and stuffed the nose with tungsten dust and will post pictures soon as it's all currently covered in tape awaiting airbrushing of the gear wells, exhaust, and cockpit.

 

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I've painted the interior of the fuselage which actually involved 4 steps - the metal exhaust, the gray gear well interior, the teal cockpit, and the light grey intake. I glued in the horizontal stabilizers at this early stage so I could make the interior of the exhaust smooth.

 

PB5mEf8.jpg

 

I also painted the nose cone light grey because large sections of the green paint on the actual aircraft's nose wore off to show this color underneath it. I've also done the gear well box which is attached to the lower wing, so after a few details in the cockpit I will glue all the main parts together.

 

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All the main parts are together now. There were no gaps except where my uncontrollably powerful muscles sanded the sprue connection points a bit too much. The nose cone is stuffed with tungsten dust and epoxy to keep it all in. As a true model making professional, I know it's bad form to actually check the balance of the aircraft before gluing it all together, so I didn't do that. If worse comes to worse I will glue it down to my bookshelf, making the bookshelf slightly less valuable but preserving the captivating parked stance of a MiG-21bis.

 

7XkcZ9L.jpg

 

It's really important to paint the interior as the instructions say and only when that is done check references to see how it should actually be painted. That's another of those professional habits I always follow. The formerly grey and now black seat will be installed when it dries.

 

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Well, it looks like humor does not really bring in the likes so I've decided to go totally serious. To that end I've added all the missing bits on the aircraft without smiling once. There are now antennas under the wingtips, ejectors on the gun, and some kind of fin that does something unknown to me but by God I'm sure it's something vital! Vital, man!

 

nZTJDCb.jpg

 

There is also now a HUD in or near the cockpit. The kit comes with decal seatbelts, but they are nearly black and would be uselessly invisible on the black seat. Outrage! I may add some foil ones later. Or not. This is a matter of most sober deliberation.

 

ujXFgzn.jpg

 

I've masked off the gear wells and am prepared to paint the underside with light blue, the most stringent and unfeeling of colors. You will notice the nose is now near-black because the picture that convinced me there was white weathering on it was a perfidious lie.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

So the next step was to spend many hours carefully sanding and filling the underside joins to a micro-surgical level of perfection. Then I sprayed a coat of RLM 74 paint which revealed tons of gaps, scratches, and giant holes under all the pylons. I fixed all those and sprayed again and now it looks like this:

 

oWiVm5B.jpg

 

But I had a lot of RLM 74 paint left over in the airbrush cup and not wanting to waste it I remembered I had a FineMolds Eastern Front Bf-109 G-2 in the early painting stages somewhere in my stash. I took it out but I realized it wasn't really in a state ready to paint. First, I had primed it with Tamiya Primer spray which had left the surface with a mottled texture like this:

 

t29g8bT.jpg

 

So I took some fine sandpaper to it to smooth it out and to remove the dust flecks that were stuck in the primer. The panel lines were also problems, as they were were uneven and in some places faded out of existence:

 

wrSe901.jpg

 

I re-engraved the lines that were erased and used Dissolved Putty in places where the panel lines were too wide or misplaced. That putty takes a long time to dry so I took the opportunity to clean the airbrush of dried light blue paint and put some MiG that was cluttering my workstation back in its box. I had yet to tackle the main problematic part of the kit - the underside join between the wing and the fuselage:

 

4Vbh2fq.jpg

 

So that will take some work, but I'm really excited about re-starting on it and can't wait to finish the Bf-109 for the... um.. group build. You know, the... well. Hmm.

 

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  • 1 month later...

One night recently I dreamt that I was supposed to be building a 1/144 scale MiG-21 and when I awoke I checked under a pile of A-4M instructions and parts to find out that was the case. The last thing I did to the model was paint the main part of the canopy frame the interior Russian blue-green. Because it's bad form to put acrylics on not-fully-cured enamel, and the only bottle of interior Russian blue-green I had was enamel, I mixed my own using a precise formula of some drips of Model Master teal and some drops of Model Master RLM 25. It looked great, and by intelligently looking ahead I didn't need to wait a couple of months before continuing painting to be sure the enamel was set and could continue work right away.

 

So a couple of months later I put down the green parts of the camouflage in all parts except the nose, which will be done last because I don't feel like installing or masking the MiG-21's jousting lance, which in this scale is the most delicate and breakable plastic part conceived by man. I did the green first because it's a lot easier to mask that than the yellow, and I'm all about doing things the easy way. Nothing's easier than painting yellow over dark colors. I'm sure of it.

 

BBiXBcB.jpg

 

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  • 1 year later...

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