AMK's 1/48 MiG-31B/BS Finished!

[mnrun.]

Thanks for the kind words folks.

No updates for a while; as I'll be out of town until next weekend. I've got ten days to think about PE seatbelts...

[thug626]

Safe travels.

[sturmbird]

Several months back, I got a look inside the box of their first Mig. I was stunned! So I'm on the hunt for one, for what seems like forever. Finally talked my LHS into ordering one, but only to find out they botched the order! Anyway, I finally got it done. Now I'm hot for their up & coming Mig25! Oh yes the Tomcat as well.
gary

[saltydog-email no longer valid]

Dang! Now I'm hungry. A sandwich and banana sounds tasty. Btw, you gotta solid build going friend. Thanks for the peek.

[mnrun.]

I extended my trip for a second week and now I'm back. I'm sure everyone has been on pins and needles waiting for the next MiG update. 

There was a box containing (finally) my MRP Russian Cockpit Turquoise when I got home. So, time to start working on the cockpit!

Here are most of the parts that make up the tub, minus the sticks and four little side panels. The first thing I noticed was some fairly large ejector pin marks on the sidewalls. If experience is any indication on this kit, I should test fit everything and see if they will actually be evident once it all goes together. Often times what EP marks are there are fairly well placed so as not to be visible.


Well damn. Not totally conspicuous, but definitely visible peaking out from behind the seats.


Here's another shot of the dry fitting, just for fun. Fit was good. Shocking!


Damn you AMK for setting high expectations! I was hoping for no grunt work.


Once the EP marks were filled, some other stuff happened:


Tonight I painted up some of the bits and bobs that also go into the cockpit: canopy frames and oleo struts for opening and closing the canopy, etc. The Russians are a colorful people.

[Leon]

Nice work on the painting M!

[wing_nut]

Welcome back. Glad to see you back at this. My kit came a few days ago and I am itching to get at it. At least the EPs were in a spot where you didn't have to sand away any details to get to them. The cockpit look real nice.

What's the weather in NC at the end of October typically? Making my 1st trip there to see my mom. She moved to Charlotte a year or so back.

[mnrun.]

Sept 29, 2016 6:59:58 GMT -5 wing_nut said:

Welcome back. Glad to see you back at this. My kit came a few days ago and I am itching to get at it. At least the EPs were in a spot where you didn't have to sand away any details to get to them. The cockpit look real nice.

What's the weather in NC at the end of October typically? Making my 1st trip there to see my mom. She moved to Charlotte a year or so back.

You're picking the best time to visit NC, definitely. Spring is windy, summer is hot and humid, and winter is...winter. Mid fall tends to be beautiful: chilly nights and pleasant during the day (high 60s, low 70s F).

[mnrun.]

Got started on these suckers tonight:



No assembly on those so far; that's as they come, off the sprue. There are a few parts that go on: some folding fins, something looking like a small pitot tube. The ordnance in this kit is gorgeous. It must be the best polystyrene ordnance out there.

[dupes]

The ordnance comes almost complete? No tedious sanding on missile halves? Wow.

[sturmbird]

Oct 1, 2016 16:56:30 GMT -5 dupes said:

The ordnance comes almost complete? No tedious sanding on missile halves? Wow.

AMK just announced that they are selling the weapons and wing tanks as a separate kit for those that want to use them o another brand.

gary

[mnrun.]

That's good news! This kit also comes with 2 R-40s and 4 R-60s. I wonder what else they'll make available.

I spent hours on the masking of these four R-33s...I'll take all the tape off today; if it doesn't look good, pretty sure I'm going to cry.

[mnrun.]

Whew! Quiet 'round these parts lately. Until the last couple of days, I've had very little time to work on the MiG in the past few weeks. But, I've made some progress lately and am slowly but surely getting close to paintin' time.

Finished the R-33s! This was quite a bit of work (mostly masking. Lots of masking.), although they're not exactly complex. But, I'm pretty happy with them. In pics of the real thing, the bare metal sections have a very dingy look to them, which I think I captured somewhat well. Probably could've taken it a bit farther.


Started the R-40s. 


Clear parts, woohoo! I bought Eduard's mask yet, as usual, and it comes with enough cutouts to do the sections that have that crazy pinkish sealant around the edges as paint, rather than as the decals the kit provides. I'm a bit allergic to applying decals to clear parts, so I'm giving the masks a try. First step is to mask off a slightly undersized area of the windows, and paint it the interior turquoise. Did an approximation of the framing on the interior, as well, where it will be visible.


Then paint the sealant color over that:


Couldn't resist:


I spent about 5 seconds deciding whether or not to build the mirror assembly for the rear cockpit extended or not. Definitely not; I'm already going open cockpit, I don't need more fragile crap sticking up to break off.


Here's the whole thing as she sits now. Overall getting dangerously close to paint. Still stalling on those PE seatbelts.

[Leon]

Nice work on the missiles and canopy M!

[Tojo72]

Getting better and better

[wing_nut]

That's airplane porn right there.

[mnrun.]

Thanks fellas!

[mnrun.]

It's a little-known fact that Darth Vader actually flew one of these:

[Leon]

Gotta love that stealthy look!

[mnrun.]

Well, with wing_nut announcing his intentions to steal my thunder , I figured I'd better get this show on the road and actually get some work done on this thing. So here we are, the fruits of this weekend's labor:

Here's the top, after doing most of the marble undercoat. The MiG-31 doesn't really live in the wild in schemes other than grey-on-grey (except for a pretty egregious blue lightning bolt scheme), so I thought a little work to make that look, well, interesting...would help. So I tried to vary a little bit the scale of the mottling and add in some directionality to it in a few places. I'll also add in some different hues, but that happened after this pic.


Finished up the R-40s. Actually I've done a little work on them since this pic was taken; they looked a bit too clean so I gave them a wash with some light tans that has helped to make them look a little dingier.


And here's the bottom! Some of that streaking is even still visible now that the top coat is down...next time I try this I'm going to be less subtle. Still, it'll help provide a base for some weathering.


I just couldn't resist this... The new and dingy R-40s in the background. Might do the same thing with the R-33s...on some or all of them. Haven't decided yet.


Paint and gloss coat down on the bottom:


And on the top:


At this point I'm quite pleased with how it's coming out so far. I'm a little suspicious that I'm going to have a fair amount of work to do when I pull the canopy masks off. Just thinking that the pinkish goop around the frames isn't going to look quite right and I'll have to do it again. We'll see.

Descending into decal hell tonight and will probably stay for a while. Blah, just gotta get through it!

[wing_nut]

Dude, I 'm not stealing nuttin' from the bad boy. NICE!

[Leon]

WOW....That bad boy is looking really good with the base coat on!

[mnrun.]

Thanks guys!

[mrversatile]

Good progress so far. I was just wondering if you lost some of the preshading on the top of the model or did it not translate in the pics? I ask because I was considering the same tact on a future build.

[mnrun.]

It's both, really. There's definitely more to be seen in person and those pics were taken without thinking much about how they were coming out. But certainly anything you do with the top coat is going to tend to wash things out a bit, whether it's the top coat itself, putting colorful decals over a grey background, or weathering.

It's a very controllable approach but in my experience, it has taken some time to get used to how much variation to leave in there. Especially the first few times I did it: when the top coat looked right to my eye, by the time I was finished with everything else the variation that was left was really hard to see. So you have to stop a little before that point.

[wing_nut]

I can see it in the photos and I know what you mean about loosingof out on the photos. Getting your brain to stop before it's too much is no easy task.

[mnrun.]

Thanks. I think I got it about right for this one, but time will tell. I'm thinking about using an oil dot filter after the decals to dull them down a little bit. There's something "off" about an old Russian interceptor with stencils and markings that are vibrant and sharp. The question will be how well that plays with the variation in the paint.

[wing_nut]

Sept 29, 2016 10:24:47 GMT -5 mnrun. said:

Sept 29, 2016 6:59:58 GMT -5 wing_nut said:

Welcome back. Glad to see you back at this. My kit came a few days ago and I am itching to get at it. At least the EPs were in a spot where you didn't have to sand away any details to get to them. The cockpit look real nice.

What's the weather in NC at the end of October typically? Making my 1st trip there to see my mom. She moved to Charlotte a year or so back.

You're picking the best time to visit NC, definitely. Spring is windy, summer is hot and humid, and winter is...winter. Mid fall tends to be beautiful: chilly nights and pleasant during the day (high 60s, low 70s F).

The weather here has been nothing short of stellar. spent a good part of the day boating around Lake Norman. I'll post a photo of the view from the deck when I get back.

[mnrun.]

Phew! Done with this thing, exactly two months after I started. Hopefully the WIP pics have conveyed what a great kit to build this has been. It really is a kit that makes you want to put in that little bit of extra effort, because all of the elements out of the box have been so well executed.

Although I must say some of the final assembly was pretty frustrating, as there are a lot of parts around the main gear wells that need to occupy the same space, or at least very nearly so. The nose gear is also structurally quite weak at the point where the oleo strut mates with the main support. What you see is the best I could do to repair it; I drilled both sides out, then sacrificed part of the same drill bit to use as a pin to join the two parts back together. It was *this* close to being lined up correctly! So if you're thinking about building this one, spring for the metal gear.

Anyway, enough of that! On to the pics:





















Welp, on to the next one. Hobby Boss Tornado IDS, as part of reddit's strike fighters group build. At some point, I might even get around to doing something besides a jet...

[Tojo72]

Beautiful work,well done,nice amount of wear and tear.