Today
I want to present my latest finished model – the 1/48 Academy Mig 21 PF.
History
All
it started approximately 30 years ago as a six year old boy, when every day I would see big silver birds in the sky above. They
were Migs 21 F and PF, and those aircraft with specific delta wings were for me
and not only for me the synonym for the world "fighter".
In
the last year I did a complete
research of the usage of the Mig 21 of all versions in the Czechoslovakian
airforce, and after the separation of the former Czechoslovakia
in Slovak Air Forces.
So
in April 2002 I received the opportunity of
photographing in the Slovak Army Historic Museum in Trencin, which is closed for
the public and have status of
archive, I packed up my digital
camera and started a half year work on documenting and cataloging the materials
about this nice delta wing bird with codename – FISHBED.
From
this point on it was only a little step to collecting complete Fishbed line in
CZ and SK forces – that was F13, PF, PFM, MF, R
and double seaters – U, UM and final version of US. Some of them are in
1/72 scale, some in quarter scale. The first of them that I decided build in
"Slovak" colors was the 1/48 PF of Academy.
Click on
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Kit
There
are many reviews written about this kit. So, kit is beautifully molded in grey
styrene with nice clear parts.
I
think it represents the PF version very well. I can see this when I look
at images of the real aircraft and compare the kit parts with drawings.
I
replaced the interior with the nice Pavla models one, sprayed it with Agama 35,
which is the real color for Mig
interior green. New gunsight with cabling. All other construction was quite easy
without problems, and I only added some important details on cabine, landing
gears and in the wheel wells, and made a new rotor of turbine last gear.
The afterburner from kit wasn’t used.
Painting
I
decide to make a collection of non weathered Migs, and in order to this I used
basic Humbrol 1, and then whole
airplane was sprayed with Revell 99 Aluminium. After 30 minutes, I slightly
started buffing of this coat, but really only fine with cotton wool. After 24
hours on the shelf for perfect drying, I masked selected panels in accordance
with photos with Tamiya tape and oversprayed non masked panels with Model Master
Metalizer Buff. Aluminium. I buffed it without unmasking after 10 minutes.
Next
day I removed masking and overcoated whole plane
with acrylic floor wax (no, not Future, not Kleer, not Clear – Sidolux
is our name, hehehe). It makes hard semigloss film on the alu-silver plates as I
saw it on real planes.
For
tyres and cockpit covering was used Eduard express masks – great.
Decals
I
used Propagteam Slovak insignia, other decals are self made – number 1215 was
scanned, drawed again in Adobe Illustrator, scaled, printed onto Revell mask sheet on inkjet printer, cut with
sharp Xacto knife, then sprayed over this template to decal paper, overpainted
with lacquer and – as easy – applied as usually.
Other small decals were painted with a thin brush.
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C
onclusions
Conclusions?
See on the images. Are better than much more words. What can you see? I mean
that quite good replica of Mig 21
PF, usually called Acrobatic Mig by the pilots. I can recommend this kit to
everyone, because is well engineered and with some aftermarket additions it will
be a really perfect element of every "Migography".
As
many of you saw in my article Ka-25 here, I am true masochist.
Next I want build Academy’s Mig 21 MF.
This
will be another café,
because this kit represent "bis" version. So, I have prepared new
corrected spin, new interior, new type of Slovak decals, drawings for correcting
scribing on wings…and you will see that
it CAN be the MF anyway!!!
Enjoy
the images!!
Juro
Click on
images below to see larger images
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