Dstream Posted June 7, 2021 Share Posted June 7, 2021 Dear all, being currently interested about cold war aircraft, I am starting a new kit which represents one of the protagonists of the post WWII period, the MiG 15 bis. For this iconic plane, I chosed the 1:48 Trumpeter kit, a brand that I never tried before. The Trumpeter kit is supposed to be a quite good representation of this jet, supposedly better than the Tamiya one. It is not my intention to spend too much efforts in detailing the cockpit because this is going to be a 'closed canopy' model. Unfortunately, once I saw the ejection seat supplied in the box, I was quite disappointed by how inaccurately the seat and its headrest was reproduced. Being the seat and headrest the most prominent details that can be seen through a closed canopy, I decided to detail them it a bit. Trumpeter moulded a 'boxed' headrest, probably roughly copying the look of a seat which equips one of the several restaured MiG flying in US, but the real one had actually quite different a look. Above, you can see the difference and the few improvements that I made with some Evergreen strips compared to the original one (the kit comes with two seats). To give a little 'busier' look to the cockpit, I also added few wiring along with the engine throttle which cannot be absent in a pilot's office. Before a coat of paint, I embellished a bit more the seat by adding also two side handles which can be well spotted from outside. To give a little 'busier' look to the cockpit, I also added few wiring along with the engine throttle which cannot be absent in a pilot's office. I am using the colors seen on various pictures on internet, but various shades can be found depicted. Eventually, I opted for a basic color obtained from the Tamiya Dark Sea Grey mixed with white (3 d.s.g. + 3 white) according to proportions that I decided by eye. I colored the ejection seat, added black paddings and seat belts from the Eduard set. I have the impression that the seatbelts are a bit oversized, but they look the part. I would like to give the cockpit a 'used' look, therefore I am liberally applying various washes on its parts which will appear less obvious through the canopy. Few old instrument decals were also used, while the instrument panel and the pedals are from the Eduard set, which is specifically made for the new recent Bronco kit, but the parts of which I can reasonably fit also on this kit. Now I have just to add a couple of red handles and a coat of matt varnish to reduce the shine. This is my first Soviet aircraft and I know little about russian aircraft, hence I am curious to see how will this one turn out. I hope you will be also interested in it. Best regards, Dan. 11 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted June 19, 2021 Author Share Posted June 19, 2021 Hi all, I have finished the cockpit parts and sprayed them with a coat of Tamiya matt clear which removed the shine and improved the overall look. However, I encountered a problem with fitting the parts that I modified. The cockpit is quite cramped and indeed the added lateral handles of the seat could not fit in the small space between the walls and the seat. I hate when this happens, but I decided that life is too short for wasting time with that, so I cut out away the handles and I will proceed without adding them. Well, I said that this will be a closed-canopy model and nobody will peer into the cockpit to check whether all the handles are in there or not. Then, the nice Eduard instrument panel went into place: As I sad earlier, I do not know much about Soviet planes, but, at the end, I am satisfied with the look of the cockpit which appears to have in my view a certain 'Russian' character. Seen the fit problem I had before, I tried to dry fit check all the parts to be sure that all components will fit inside the fusalage halves: I think I have understood now the reason for the narrow cockpit: the air passages the bring the air from the intake to the engine are located along the sides of the cockpit and the latter gets 'squeezed' in size to avoid a resulting too wide a fuselage. Anyway, some efforts seem to be required to fit everything inside. I did not make up my mind about exposing or not the jet engine provided in the kit. Usually, I am a bit critical about these items, especially when they come with movable parts as in this case. The poseable parts have generally a toy-ish design which I am not a fan of. This case is not an exception being the details used to join the tail to the rest of the fuselage very obvious. For the moment, I will give it a try and I will defer the final decision to a later stage. Hence, I pulled the engine bulkhead out of the box and found not a very nice part, afflicted by extractor marks. These marks are located on a web that shouldn't be there. I presume that these triangular holes are the air ducts and they should be opened up. This is what I did, adding also two curved wall that should represent the internal walls of the air ducts: The remaing horizontal sect should represent the wing spar that crosses the fuselage (and the ducts) in the middle. In the front air intake, on the vertical sect that splits the airflow, the headlight is faired in the sect. The transparent part of the headlight had an annoying extractor mark in the middle of its concave surface which deserves some cares because it will be a focal point of any frontal view of the aircraft. Therefore, I first sanded off the circular extractor mark and finally polished it with a Tamija fine compound. A coat of floor polish restored the shine and protects the part from the fumes of the glue. Here, the finished trasparent part with its edges painted black and ready to be glued on the duct sect which is on the right. The three tiny holes on the part holder should help to make the headlight cavity not gas-tight. The headlight finally inside the air intake: Ok, not perfect, but surely less obvious than before. That is all for the moment, best regards, Dan. 9 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2lefthands Posted June 27, 2021 Share Posted June 27, 2021 (edited) Very nice work so far! The light is superb! Edited June 27, 2021 by 2lefthands 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted July 21, 2021 Author Share Posted July 21, 2021 Hi all, slowly progressing on this build that I thought to be an easy OOB, but instead is requiring a lot of work because of the very poor fit of some of its parts. This is the ammunition compartment where I replaced the plastic barrels of the two 23 mm guns with aluminium tubes primed with the Tamiya white primer. The kit advertises the possibility to leave this compartment exposed, but I am not interested in that and I wanted to mount it closed to better reveal the lines of the fuselage. This was the beginning of some fit problems because the lid and the guns seem not to designed for that. Once I tried to put the parts together, unexpected awfully wide gaps appeared everywhere around the lid. In addition, filing was required to persuade the gun barrels to fit into their slots. Perhaps it was my fault, but I am really surprised by such bad a fit in a modern kit. To fill the gaps, I started to contour the parts with strips of styrene card and to create a rabbet for the lid edges. Before gluing the lid into place, I stuffed the weapon compartment with pieces of lead wire: After gluing the lid, the tip of the 32 mm gun barrel was removed to be later replaced by an Eduard part. I completed filling the gaps with pieces of styrene cards and stretched sprue. I also dry test fitted the Eduard muzzle into its fairing: Meanwhile, I started working also on the Klimov-vk1, the Russian version of the RR Nene jet engine. These are its various components just painted. I searched on the web for pictures of this engine to find which colors were more likely to be used for it. I painted the matt parts of the jet pipe with a mix of Tamiya matt aluminium and matt white (2/1), while for the shiner parts I used various shades of Vallejo metallic colors. The black parts are painted with Tamiya flat black mixed with few drops of Tamiya clear. I replaced the small plastic pins used to suspend the engine with brass tubes for added strength. I dry brushed the black parts with Humbrol gun metal to highlight some details and finally I used the Tamiya black and brown accent panel liners on the metallic parts to hint at some weathering. Next, I will spray some light shades of brown to reproduce those parts of the engine that are discolored by the heat. That's all for now, any comment is appreciated, best regards, Dan 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted August 4, 2021 Author Share Posted August 4, 2021 (edited) Dear all, I completed the front office with the gunsight and glued the windscreen on. The windscreen part was masked with a combination of masking tape and masking liquid. This is how the cockpit looks like now: At the end, what is visible of the front cockpit doesn't look too bad. The characteristic vertical white strip, which is a trademark of Soviet fighters, is well noticeable. Then, I had fun adding some weathering to the jet engine. I tried to reproduce some discoloration due to the heat by selectively spraying a very diluted red brown. This is the rear fuselage dry fitted with the front part. Finally, it starts to look as an airplane and not just like a bullet. The unmistakable lines of the Mig 15 can now be seen. Its short fuselage and the huge swept backward tail surface can be noticed resembling to some extent the configuration of the Focke Wulf 183. I posed the engine next to it because now I have to decide what to do with it. Once fitted inside, the installation of the rear fuselage becomes a bit problematic. The fuselage seems not to fit well the engine and a lot of force is needed to slide the jet pipe into the rear fuselage with the risk of scratching the paint of the engine. Hence, I am going to glue the fuselages together and scratch build a trolley for the engine for posing it next to the aircraft. This seems to me the most straightforward and good compromise for finishing the build within a reasonable time. This way, I would get a complete airframe showing the unbroken shape of the aircraft, which is the option I like most. The fuselage got wings and a tail (not glued yet). The fit of the wing roots is quite OK on the upper side but it is a bit disappointing on the other side: I resorted to fill the gaps with stretched sprue from the plastic of the kit for a minimal disruption of the surface details: The P-51 paper tank in the background of the picture is waiting to become the new jet pipe to be installed inside the airframe. The tank was cut at its tapered end and its walls were sanded down to a suitable thin thickness. Supporting bracketry was improvised from styrene card: An annular gap was left between the pipe and the airframe as was seen in pictures: Then, I also built some fictional tubing into the wheel bays for added detailing: Next, the main assemblies will be glued together and paintwork can begin. That's all for now, Best regards, Dan. Edited August 4, 2021 by Dstream Improve text 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
2lefthands Posted August 5, 2021 Share Posted August 5, 2021 Sorry to repeat myself: very, very nice work! The engine and the pit looking great! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted September 25, 2021 Author Share Posted September 25, 2021 Hi all, after quite some time, I am now back to my Mig 15. I glued all the main parts of the airframe, included the fuselage portions, and spent time on inscribing the lost details. In particular, the joint between the fore and aft fuselage parts needed several CA filling, sanding and scribing sessions. Then the airframe was readied for the primer by degreasing it with alcohol. I sprayed a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1500 which went on nicely leaving a very smooth surface. To check the work on the re-scribed details, I applied some Tamiya black panel liner which revealed the lines and gave a more 3D appearance to the model. After few corrections, I sanded all the airframe with wet extra fine sand paper obtaining a very consistently smooth surface. I applied a grey color to the wheel wells and added some oil colors for reproducing some grime inside the wells: Then I masked all the bays and details that need not to be painted with the underside color: To render the light blue more interesting with some tonal variations, I started with an uniform dark color. I chose the Mr. Color Extra Dark Sea Grey which sprayed beautifully and dried with a slight shine finish. Then, I sprayed random blotches of matt white on top of the EDSG (sort of black basing) followed by wet sanding everything. After that, I started spraying thin layers of the light blue paint to gradually cover and uniformize the marbled surface. The light blue was obtained by a mix of Tamiya XF-23 (2/3) and flat white (1/3). This is a picture that I took after few layers: Eventually, this the slightly non-uniform coverage of the light blue that was obtained. Later on, I will add a little post-shading with a darker tone of the blue. That is all for now, next I will tackle the upper surfaces. Thanks for visiting and any comment will be appreciated. Best regards, Dan. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted November 6, 2021 Author Share Posted November 6, 2021 Hi all, after quite some time, I am able to post some progress on this build. I had to apply the camouflage with several iteration because I did not like the colors which I originally chose. At the end, for the light brown I started from a RAF Dark Earth which I lightened with white and yellow while for the green I made a 50-50 mix with the previous XF-13 and XF-5, which is a brighter green. Finally, I tried to spray the camouflage bands freehand with my airbrush. The final result was declared OK by me, after many repeated touch-ups to correct the most obvious oversprays. I went on with the finish of the camouflage and brushed on a layer of floor polish to obtain a smooth surface in preparation for the decals. Actually I brushed two layers on the location of the decals. It was followed by a very light wet sanding which removed any remaining roughness. Then the decals were applied and a layer of Tamiya gloss X-22 sealed the paint and the decals. As it can be noted, this version of MiG-15 is decorated with just few decals. The decals are sufficiently thin, with little visible carrier and conformed well to the surface. However, in my opinion, they lack saturation of their colors. The red tone, which is the predominant one for this aircraft, does not look as a full saturated red, but instead appears slightly discolored, almost pinkish: I think this is not appropriate for a Soviet aircraft! Unfortunately, I will have to live with that. Now the gloss paint needs to cure well for a couple of days before I can start working with oil washes for highlighting panels and details. Now, I will have to start working also on the remaining parts like the landing gears, the drop tanks, etc. This is all for now, thanks for following, best regards, Dan. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted November 14, 2021 Author Share Posted November 14, 2021 Hi all, after the gloss paint, I applied oil colors to highlight details and then I sprayed all the model with Tamiya flat clear which left a satin finish which I think is quite alright. Once cured, I started to remove the masking from the jet pipe, windscreen and canopy. In this picture, the unmasked canopy is just dry fitted in place: That's all for now, Best regards, Dan. 7 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 5, 2021 Author Share Posted December 5, 2021 Hi all, thanks for the likes. After a long interval, I have finished a bunch of small items of my MiG: I cleaned up the landing gears and added the tubes of the breaks, as seen in walkaround pictures, to busy them up. Prepared the aux tanks and wheels. I replaced the main wheels with Eduard's resin parts which look nicer. Then sprayed the landing gears, painted details and completed them with Tamiya panel liner (black and brown) to get the feel of the real thing. To break the more tedious works, I also started to add small stains and scratches using watercolor pencils. This is the underside with stains and the main landing gear legs finally glued in place. A light coat of matt clear will remove the remaining shine. Then I started to 'furnish' the model with the last bits and for me, this means progressing at a even more glacial pace than my usual with very small progress at every step. Here, I rebuilt the arched frame that is located inside the canopy and which was provided as an obvious solid piece in the kit. This is how it looks once painted and glued inside the canopy. I find that this is a little improvement which is easy to implement. Continuing with landing gear doors and other little details on the underside: The landing gears are not completed yet (oleo jacks still missing), but my MiG can finally stands on its own legs now: Well, the model is a hopeless tail sitter and its final equilibrium will be decided by fraction of grams of the addition of the last details, despite the amount of lead that I added in the gun compartment (and the omission of the jet engine). A detail of the Eduard's cannon muzzle which is a nice addition. All the muzzles were brushed with graphite powder to give a bit of shine to their metallic paint: That's all for now, thanks for watching. Dan. 8 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
exdraken Posted December 8, 2021 Share Posted December 8, 2021 Great work! Camouflaged Soviet MiG-15s are rather rare, no? I have not sen many models like that! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 8, 2021 Author Share Posted December 8, 2021 4 hours ago, exdraken said: Great work! Camouflaged Soviet MiG-15s are rather rare, no? I have not sen many models like that! Yes, I haven't found pictures of this type of camouflage on the web. Here, on BM I read that Soviet intervention in Korea had not to be publicized, hence the scarcity of images spread around. Thank you for your comment, Dan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 19, 2021 Author Share Posted December 19, 2021 Hi, after long time, I am posting the mounting of the last bits which always take longer than expected. I added a pin to the antenna mast made with a metallic wire which otherwise would be impossible to glue on the rounded skin of the fuselage. I also made a blade antenna made by hammering flat a brass rod and another short one made with small brass tube. These will replace the fiddly plastic parts provided with the kit. Here the antennas are inserted and glued: The pitot tube was replaced by one which I made out of metallic micro-tubes: The airbrakes with their oleo jacks were installed also. The jacks are really awful, but I did not have the patience to replace them with scratch built items, so I used the OOB ones: The main landing gear was completed with the equally awful OOB oleo jacks: Now the last touch ups, then the antenna wire and the canopy are the last details to be mounted. I prepared the drop tanks, but at the end, I like the model better without them. See you next time, Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IPMS19 Posted December 19, 2021 Share Posted December 19, 2021 - Very nice building, I just would have hadded a more bluish color for the cockpit but it is only my own feeling. A camouflaged Soviet Fagot, why not, during their transfer from Russian factories to Korea they may have been adorned with Russian stars, this transfer being made under a very strong veil of secrecy, that may explain why photos are so rare, if ever there have been some ,but what ever, that doesn't lessen your very good work.... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 19, 2021 Author Share Posted December 19, 2021 22 minutes ago, IPMS19 said: I just would have hadded a more bluish color for the cockpit Thanks for your kind comments. As far as the color of the interior, I think that for that old aircraft, a grey tint should be appropriate. A more bluish tone is clearly appropriate for later types. Thanks and best regards, Dan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adam Maas Posted December 20, 2021 Share Posted December 20, 2021 8 hours ago, IPMS19 said: - Very nice building, I just would have hadded a more bluish color for the cockpit but it is only my own feeling. A camouflaged Soviet Fagot, why not, during their transfer from Russian factories to Korea they may have been adorned with Russian stars, this transfer being made under a very strong veil of secrecy, that may explain why photos are so rare, if ever there have been some ,but what ever, that doesn't lessen your very good work.... MiG cockpits were grey at least through the early MiG-21's, the famous cockpit blue/green came into use well after the MiG-15 ended production. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 Hi all, I am still posting a WIP for the engine stand which I scratch built blending various configurations found on the web: I built that from plastic card and evergreen profiles. I am afraid this is not a proper workshop stand, but rather a simple one like those that might have been used for storage of the engine, but I didn't feel to embark a more complex design. This is it after a coat of color and brown staining: The engine was completed with some tubing and wiring and put on its finished stand: Clearly, there is no claim for accuracy here, being the added wiring and tubing an over simplification of the real thing, the purpose of which was just to busy up the engine. I will pose the engine next to the aircraft model once finished. Finally, the wire aerial, although it is barely visible in this picture: Next, canopy and final pictures. I expect to post the next installment on the R.F.I. section. Thanks for following, Dan. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dstream Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 Hi, this is the last picture of this WIP with the completed model: More pictures will be posted soon in the R.F.I. section. Best regards, Dan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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