For a quite a while
I was thinking about making a shiny, silver jet. One of the models that I
had in my stash was MiG-19PM from Trumpeter. I also had an aftermarket
resin detail set and decals (the latter from Hi-Decal; allowing me to make a
mandatory :-) Polish version, not available from the box). Everything
seemed to be under control...
Unfortunately, it turned out that the money spent on the resin set was utterly
wasted. One part (containing front landing gear bay and front equipment
bay) simply didn't fit. The "nose inset" was too small and the
equipment bay was of a wrong shape. On top of that, other parts didn't
improve enough over the plastic ones to justify a hassle of trying to fit them
into the model. The only part that could be used was an ejection seat,
but, by that time, I decided to make this model out-of-the-box.
I started, as usual, with painting the cockpit.
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images below to see larger images
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A process of build
itself went fairly quickly. Unfortunately, my initial worries about this
model being overengineered turned out to be justified. Trumpeter decided
to produce models of as many variants of the plane using as little number of
sprues as possible and split some parts of the model into way too many parts.
This, combined with the quality of the plastic used by the Chinese company,
caused quite a few parts to fit less than acceptably. In of itself, it
shouldn't have been too bad. It simply took more than the usual amount of
putty, CA and polishing. The problem was the NMF finish, which exaggerates
even the smallest flaws in the quality of the surface. When I was finally
done, I was so happy that I didn't have to polish plastic anymore that I simply
forgot to restore at least half of the panel lines "destroyed" during
the polishing process.
Fortunately, the rest of the
build went rather smoothly. After thoroughly washing the model (to
eliminate even the smallest specs of dust, fingerprints etc), I painted it with
glossy, black enamel from Model Master. On top of that went three separate
thin layers of Alclad White Aluminum. After letting it dry for a couple of
days I masked individual panels and painted them using three other shades of
Aluminum: Duraluminum, Polished and Dark. Next was the nose (painted Dark
Green - Model Master #1710) and all internal parts (painted with custom mixed
dark grey). Luckily for me, initially I mixed more of the dark grey that I
needed. This saved me some time later, when I needed to paint some small
parts that I forgot to paint in the very beginning.
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images below to see larger images
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The first picture above clearly
shows the contrast between different shades of aluminum. The
"dark" one is a little bit too dark, but the contrast is not stark
enough to force me to repaint :-).
The rest of the build went without a hitch. I put decals directly on
Alclad and after treating them with Sol they practically became part of the
painted surface. I cut as much as I could of the clear carrier from the
side numbers and the rest almost disappeared.
Sean
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