This is the second Kit I build since my long long “youth pause”. There’s still a lot of improvement to be made but I guess Kit Modelling is an ongoing learning process. I was not very lucky with this Kit. I ordered it from ebay like many other kits, but this one was in bad shape. The box had no visible defect, but the lower part of the fuselage was completely bend.

Here you can clearly see the Problem. Believe me the picture doesn’t make justice to the Problem. The whole piece was bend. A lot of filling and sanding was required here.

The cockpit isn’t really great either. I expected some more detail. The seats were utterly useless. I had to get some third party seats for the model.

Same for the instrument panels. They’re ok but not what you would expect. A fellow modeller told me that my expectations were too high for 1/48. Maybe after a few more models I will have a different point of view. Here the color was applied and the first wash as well.

Here the damage on the upper part of the fuselage. It’s really bad. At this point I was wondering if I should bin the thing or not…..

Finally after a lot of work, it doesn’t look that bad. Let’s hope the rest of the kit is in a better shape….

Here’s the cockpit view with the new seats in it. The HUD and ejection handle are scratch made. Not perfect, .. but it’s a start. The instrument panels were detailed with a wash of grey and black and the dials were paint.

Another view of the cockpit.

I’ve painted the Wheel Wells with Mig Interior Green, and applied a water color wash. The result is satisfying to me. You can also see the level of repairs done to the bend parts of the kit.

Here again more detailed the Wash applied. After a very long break I’ve started working on the model again. I was put off due to some “changes” in my house and due to the VERY poor fitting of the Air Intakes. At a point I even thought about throwing the whole kit to the bin.

Here I’ve airbrushed the belly of the Mig. I’ll do the “top” tonight and then the camouflage. This was done with Humbrol Fulcrum Grey.

Topside done. I’ve also drawn the camouflage “lines” with a lead pen. Next time I will use a different way of doing this though. It wasn’t 100% the way I expected it doing the camouflage freehand.

Here is a close-up of the prework for the camouflage.

<The “pit” a bit closer. I definitely need a Macro lense

Finally, I finished the Kit……. Now I just have the base left to do. Let me say again that this Kit was a pain to do. Too many bend pieces, the decals are awful, some pieces were missing. Ok it was an ebay buy, .. but still. In the end it turned out to be more of a testing kit that anything else. I’ve tested new techniques (to me) for the camouflage, weathering and the varnish.

Here’s a close up of the display base. Sorry for the crappy picture but I took it in quite a hurry.

I just need to clean up the edges and that’s it. For a first try with Plaster I am quite satisfied. One of the separation lines are too large but I won’t change that now. The base was done with Plaster. Nothing special really. Made a “mould” that I used to pour the plaster in on the wooden base. After it was a bit harder I drew the separations between the “blocks”. Once dry I painted it with Artists Acrylic paints and let it dry for roughly 24 hours. Then I used regular Valejo Acrylics to draw the yellow lines. A bit of weathering was applied with water colors.
The next one I will try to mix the grey color with the plaster before pouring it into the mould. Hopefully it will make weathering easier.

The Mig on the display base.

One more

Playing around with the camera

Once I start I have a really hard time stopping…….
Good news. My Mig was published on ARC. You can find it in the gallery under MIG29 page 2.