The
Indian Government signs the contract for Mig-29 in 1986 and the Mig-29s coming
to Indian by 1987 and inducted into No.28 and No.47 squadron. The Indian Mig-29
went into action during the Kargil war and was used as an escort. However, by
the mid-2000s it was getting older and IAF decided to upgrade in a similar line
of Mig-29SMT, however, it included many foreign-made avionics and took her
maiden flight in 2011, considered one of the most advanced Mig-29s in service
around the world. All IAF Mig-29s will be upgraded to the UPG standard.
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It was a nice kit and I
truly enjoyed building it, the details are very nice and I would say it is one
of the best kits out there, Trumpeter has done it job well. The Indian Mig-29UPG
is almost identical to Mig-29SMT in appearance except for a few add on the most
visible being the ELT-568 jamming pod at the right vertical tail, I scratch
built it, there are many small details but I omitted it. For painting I
used three types of Tamiya grey and eyeball with ref pictures. Midway through
the construction, I realized there is an error I made and it will cost me almost
3 months, The front canopy broke into two parts due to my silly errors, however,
a fellow modeller sent me a ICM canopy which took some time to fixed on the Trumpeter
kit as the dimension was wee different, but finally managed to fixed it to a
satisfactory level.