Detailing:
The Eduard photoetched detail set is used
to add some detail here and there (mainly for the angle of attack vanes and
various aerials). Much of the Eduard set is for the cockpit area and they are
not usable if you have the Neomega set at hand.
The undercarriage is detailed again with
monofilament fishing lines and some strip styrene.
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The canopy locks on the
edges of the cockpit are made from fine electrical wire.
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There were some sink
marks on the landing gear doors, those were filled with Tamiya putty, sanded
and the rivets are remade using a needle attached to an X-acto handle.
The landing lights were drilled out and the hole is filled with Humbrol
Glosscote, building with 10-20 layers of it. (It becomes thi when it cures, a
large number of layers are needed)
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I replaced the kit pitot tube with a stainless
steel sewing needle, reshaping it with help of some superglue and filler to
look like the real one.
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Painting, decals and weathering:
On starting the project, I decided to build an
non-standard Russian Flanker. But I couldn't find any aftermarket decals for
the UB kit. Looking to the various paint schemes, this scheme with the Russian
flag colors on the fins attracted me. The problem was that I hadn't enough
references on the plane, so I asked at various discussion boards some info
about this plane. Sergei from Russia responded and sent me a complete paint
reference of this aircraft. (Unfortunately I can't read your surname Sergei,
because I didn't have cyrillic fonts installed.) He told me that he is working
on this aircraft for an aftermarket decal firm and they are going to release
the decals of this plane in the future. I couldn't wait and prepared the
artwork. I printed it using a professional quality laser printer onto blank
decal paper, you can hire those printers at the copy centers here. Don't need
to buy an Alps printer. The only drawback of those printers are that they
can't print white, so you should print some of your artwork onto white paper,
but the printing quality is very good.
At the end I have used a combination of custom made decals, kit decals,
Propagteam 48015 sheet and Cutting edge 48001 sheet for the markings.
The paint scheme differs from the standard flanker
paint scheme, but the colors are the same. I planned to use the Modelmaster
Flanker Colors for this project, but testing them showed that they look like
to much greenish, especially the pale blue. I tweaked on them a bit with
mixing blue, white and grey and tried to get as close as possible to the real
colors.
I weathered the model with pastel dusts again. The
dielectric white areas of the Flankers looked clean compared to their
fuselages on the photos I have, so the weathering on those areas are kept at
the minimum level.
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The tires of the Russian planes look sometimes totally
worn-out, I tried to duplicate this by attaching the vinyl tire to a shaft and
really "weathering" it with my Dremel tool :)
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The project took approximately 2.5 months on-and
off work to complete. Most of the time were spent with designing, tweaking
decals (It was my first attempt to print custom decals) and trying to
scratchbuild the missiles. Some areas of the Academy kit are very bad and the
other areas are very good. But the project was fun to build, because I tried
and learned new techniques.
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For those who are interested, I have included a
shot of my photo-setup. Credit goes to Ufuk Aydiner for this setup, it works
very well.
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Kaan
Click here to
go to part 1 of this article
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