1/48 Academy Mig 21 PF

by Juraj Macko

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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 images below to see larger images

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

Photos and text © by Juraj Macko