MiG-21 progress update.

The main undercarriage bays are now glued together, just a few parts left to add and they're ready to install.

The cockpit is slowly coming together too.

REMEMBER!

Airbrush a base coat of white before spraying the blue/green mix!

If you don't, the resulting colour will be slightly too dark. With the white base coat it matches the intensity of the painted photo etch parts very well.

 

A slight problem was encountered handling the photo etched parts.

No.2 points to where the paint on the photo etch part came off during assembly. I managed to find the two tiny pieces and will 'glue' them back on with flat varnish once everything else in the cockpit is done.

No.1 points to where, during the glueing process, the capillary action of the glue flowed in between my finger and the cockpit part! Luckily the ejection seat hides it. :/

No.3 points to an area of the port side panel that I'm not sure what to do with? Should it be bent down? The instructions are a bit vague on this. (No.2 below)

No.1 points to a very slight gap between the photo etch part and the fuselage. I'm not going to try and 'fix' it as its not that big a deal.

Remember to paint the section highlighted by the red rectangle in the undercarriage bay colour before glueing the fuselage together! Same with the outside edge of the front undercarriage bay.

The arrow here points to slightly protruding ejector pin mark that needs to be dealt with before painting and gluing the fuselage halves.

Weathering experiments!

If you haven't watched any of the AK Interactive DVD's on weathering you should, I highly recommend them!

These are the 3 I've been watching over the last couple of weeks.....

Watching Mig Jimenez paint and weather these vehicles is nothing short of amazing! Through his efforts to teach the wider modelling community and AK Interactive's high quality production values, these DVD's are a 'must have' for the modeller wishing to learn more about how to paint and weather their models. Even though only armour is shown on these particular DVD's it shouldn't stop the Aircraft or Science Fiction modeller from gaining valuable information either.

I must admit I've had to watch and re-watch these DVD's many times, such is the depth and wealth of information in them. The main secret to Mig's techniques is 'layers'. One techniques is layered on top of another to get the effect of the finished product.

Over the next weeks/months I will be practising many of the techniques and variations thereof on several of my ongoing projects. I have already begun some initial tests to see what I can achieve after what I have learned. See for yourself......

Here's an old King Tiger turret from a model I build many years ago.

 And here we have some camouflage experiments mixed with some weathering experiments.

Inside the yellow circle is a mystery substance, probably some sauce dropped by one of my children! Not to worry it's only a practice model! :)

 I must say a big "thank you!" to Mig and the AK Interactive team for a very good product and for reigniting my passion for an awesome hobby!

Another robot?

For those of you wanting to see more of the White Glint robot, unfortunately the owner of that robot wanted it back before I had a chance to finish it. I will however be building and weathering a Kotobukiya GN GAN01 Sunshine-L and a Rayleonard 04-Alicia Unsung later in the year. In the mean time I asked my 5 year old son if I could paint one of his toy robots for some weathering practise. He gave me permission! So, over the next few weeks/months (time permitting) I'll be painting and weathering this robot just to see what I can come up with as an experiment!

This is what it looked like to begin with.........

And after two coats of Vallejo Grey Primer airbrushed unthinned.

Stay tuned!