Zvesda 1/72 MiG 21 Bis

Mr. Thuens, which ever direction you choose to go, you have fantastic start! You've definitely have my attention.

Toshi

Mate you are very kind, thanx :-)

I have detailed the cockpit sidewalls and instrument panel, I hope to get the cockpt assembled today.

Theuns

I am a little confused wrt the cockpit....the kit supplies 2 different tubs and instrument pannels.

The tub is supose to fit into slots in the fuse side walls. The one with the tabs for that has basic sidewall detail, the one without the sidewall detail has no tabs so locating it might be a hassle.

I will remove the detail on the one with the tabs and glue on the nicely detailed seperate sidewalls, I also will use the IP that looks the closest to pix I found of the Bis on the net.

Looks good my man. Zvezda's are nice. The level of detail pleases me quite a lot. One thing I learned from doing mine was I had to work much more slowly, but the end result was worth it.

BK

Nice start on this, i like the cockpit detail. I have herad a lot of good things about Zvezda aircraft kits, need to get myself one soon.

I must say this zvesda has made me look closely at their 1/72 MiL 8/17 Hip....

I found the fuse a little fiddly to get it all lined up and straigh, nothing major though.

The seperate fin also will need a little superglue as a filler but again minor detail and the overall fit is not bad. The wingroot fit ,during dryfitting, showed some gaps that will have to be filled after joining or the two surfacees will have to be "faced" and then glued.

I will have to redo the paint on the glareshield as the glue messed the paint up.

Wingroot looks ok visually, the glue welded it well....only primer will tell if it is good.



Theuns

I manage to get the alclad on, it looked OK untill I saw I smudged the top of the spine...damn! Will have to mask it off and redo tomorrow.

Theuns

Wow, what a beautiful NMF! 

Toshi

Thanx, I will dull it down just a little after decals otherwize it is to shiny and I really doubd that eastern block planes lokked very shiny ;-)

Theuns

Nice work on the NMF. Some nice panel variation there.

Thanx.

I rarely buy different shades of alclad, it is just to expensive for me.

I used airframe allu here and on the avionics spine you can see how very shyni it is over the gloss black - pollished allu would be to "chrome like"

I spray till I have a dark allu look ,usually about 3-4 light coats, mask off some panels and then spray 3 more coats to lighten the rest (using the same airframe allu)

In sone might and angles the tone difference is dramatic but not overly so, at diffenrent angles the same pannels almost mach the rest so I am hapy with the tecnique as it gives the best "real" look to the model.

I work at an airport where there is a L-29 in  bare metal so to my eye this matches perfectly.

Theuns

I got the build completed but now can't post pix as PB is down for maintenance :-(

Theuns

Here it is...

Nice job, the metal color is very convincing.

Very nice indeed. I need to work on my NMF some more, would love a finish like this.

Thanx,

It is really easy to do.

Get a super smooth gloss balck base (I use tamiya gloss black ename) then I use alclad airframe alluminium foa about 3-4 very light coats to have a dark look to the alluminium.

Mask off a few panels I want to look dark, shoot 3 coats more on to lighten the rest.

Remove the masking and shoot on the last coat to "soften" the different tones a little.

I do not use different bottles of alclad shades, it looks to "hard" to me, the result I get from using the same shade to me looks better.

Then I do a black acrylic ink was and decals , and seal it all with a light coat of alclad clear.

Theuns