After masking the canopy, I carefully cemented it into place with the help of some pressure to get it to fit with minimal gaps.
The canopy frame needs pre-painting but I wasn’t sure what’s the correct color so I just went with the tried and true black.
The MiG I’m modeling has a red shock cone and fuel tank so these were painted now. The red went over a base of pink to really get a nice hue.
The shock cone was then masked off. I then attached the nose probe and antenna before painting.
First a coat of black. In this case it’s Mr Hobby Aqueous Finishing Surfacer Black.
At this point I noticed that the AURI MiG has an additional antenna on its back. This was replicated with 0.3mm plastic sheet. I cut a shallow groove onto the spine for a better fit for the antenna.
As usual for full metal finishes I started at the bottom to get the hang of the consistency of the paint. The main color is Vallejo Metal Color White Aluminium.
At this point I noticed the sink marks…
And even more sink marks after I have painted the whole kit. The black patch is cured black CA glue that I use as a filler.
So once all the sink marks are dealt with, I resprayed the whole kit again.
A pretty egregious seamline is on the leading edge of the wingroot and it’s not just a seamline, there’s also a step. I wasn’t sure how to fix this without damaging the surrounding panel lines so I decided to live with it.
I wanted to add variations to the finish so I referenced Jon Bryon’s excellent build of the Trumpeter 1/48 MiG-21F-13. The panels were carefully masked off with 1mm masking tape then backfilled with light tack masking tape.
The second color is Vallejo Metal Color Dull Aluminium.
I then misted a coat of Vallejo Thinner to help smoothen the finish.
The topside was then masked in the same way.
I think doing this is visually more interesting than a uniform single color. From what I’ve gathered, AURI MiGs historically had the varied finish but the one on display at the Air Force musuem (the subject of my build) was repainted into a single overall silver color before becoming a museum piece.
Build Log
Pt.1 – Construction | Pt.2 – Construction
Pt.3 – Painting & Finishing | Pt.4 – Painting & Finishing
