Tag: 1/72

WIP : Italeri 1/72 MiG-37 Ferret E – Painting & Finishing

Oof… it took quite a while to fix the gaps.

It was prime, fill, sand, buff, prime, fill, sand, buff over and over to finally get to the painting stage. I don’t think I did a banged-up job but it’ll have to do.

For the color scheme, I played around with the line-art and came up with the following. It’s not exactly a Soviet color scheme but I think it’ll be striking. It looks like a masking nightmare so I hope I can pull it off.

Colors begin with the usual black base.

Next a marble coat with white. I’m not sure how much of the marble coat will be visible once the camouflage is on so I made sure to add Glaze Medium to all the colors to make them less opaque.

The bottom and part of the top are one single color so these get tackled first with Mig AMMO Light Grey. With a color so light minor problems like scratches and spatters readily show up. These will be dealt with later.

For the digital camouflage, I decided to go from the dark to light colors so first on is Model Air Dark Panzer Grey which is really a very dark grey to the point of almost being black.

Then out with the masking tape to do the digital camouflage. Unfortunately I can’t see the immediate results until all 3 colors are painted on. So fingers crossed. 😀

Next is the dark blue using Game Air Sombre Grey.

Then more masking and the last color is Lifecolor Non Specular Blue Grey.

So how were the results? It turned out OK with no as much paint leak as expected. I think there needs to be less gray and more black though.

So I went back and added more camouflage. I think it looks better now. Not ideal but I’m moving on.

The stuff under the plane were also prepped and everything was gloss coated together. I lost one of my main wheels sp I modified the ones from the VF-0C kit to fit. They are the same height but different thickness. Luckily this is a fictional aircraft ey?

I kept the markings simple. The kit decals have degraded too much so I used markings from the Eagle Strike EP72092 ‘Sukhoi Su-27 641st Guards Fighter Aviation’ sheet. The stencils come from the Trumpeter Su-30MKK Flanker G kit. I also added a WWII-era Russian propaganda (??) marking on the starboard tail fin. This came from an Academy Il-2 Sturmovik kit.

Once wiped down and glossed the kit goes through the usual panel wash with Mig AMMO Deep Brown Wash.

While wiping off the panel wash, I managed to wipe off the paint on the peaks of sections on the bottom. /Face palm.

To blend the camouflage colors together, I did the oil paint dot filter method with white, dark gray, blue and yellow.

Once blended together, the contrast in the camouflage was reduced.

I then attached the (for lack of a better word) vanes in the exhaust area. Neither of their pegs fit into the their corresponding holes so I ended up cutting them off and butt joining with cement. I also sprayed some exhaust stains.

Next are the landing gear. The main gear doors are supposed to fit flush but they can’t due to the oleo on the landing gear. They also cannot be posed fully open because they would clear the bottom of the wheels. So I went with slightly opened instead. Since I couldn’t practically attach them without marring more of the painted surface, I left out the much smaller doors on the side. I took the opportunity to also patch up the paintwork that were stripped and re-weathered the areas.

I then handpainted the sensor bumps on the wingtips and fuselage before giving everything a flat coat. I then added the clear nose piece. I managed to lose the original so this is a replacement cut from a blister pack. Cockpit masking is as usual last off. All done!

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Painting & Finishing

WIP : Italeri 1/72 MiG-37 Ferret E – Construction

Next up is what I initially hoped was a quick build. The MiG-37 is a fictional Soviet stealth aircraft designed by the Testors Model Company as the Eastern Bloc counterpart to their F-19 Ghostrider kit. My copy is a Italeri re-boxed kit.

Work begins with the cockpit which is very sparse and simplified although surprisingly, all the consoles have molded detail instead of decals. There’s even molded on harness details on the ejection seat.

I replaced the molded harness with 1mm tape instead.

The cockpit area itself is very bare.

So I spruced it up with bits of plastic plate. The kit comes with a clear part for the HUD but there’s no HUD mount so I made one up with plastic plate also.

Looks OK after a coat of paint, which is in the usual weird green color Soviet aircraft cockpits tend to be in.

After giving everything a thin wash of black, I added the HUD. Instead of the kit HUD though I made a thinner one from a battery blister pack.

The other parts came together quite quickly after that.

And then I sprayed white color to check for seamlines.

Yikes! The gaps that are revealed are quite bad, especially the wingroots at the bottom which look more like canals.

Elbow grease and time will be needed to get this to look decent which means this won’t be a quick build after all. Ah well… I should have known better.

Build Log
Part 1 – Construction | Part 2 – Painting & Finishing