1/72 Italeri MiG-29

Gallery Article by Robert Serfőző on Mar 29 2013

 

 

The "Starry Blue Bird"

The airplane MÍG-29 is taken on the palette of several manufacturers with more or less success. The kit of Italian Italeri is popular among the Hungarian mock-up builders because of it’s relative simplicity and shape fidelity.  I obtained the above mentioned kit with barter.

 

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The Hungarian Air Force in 1998, celebrated its 60th anniversary.  A Fly Day was held on that occasion at the air base of Kecskemet where I could see the No. 22 MIG-29 with gala painting on it. I built the mock-up without upgrade I rather focused on the look.

After a few weeks of work, I begun to prepare the mock-up for painting with titillation.  At first the entire surface of it was mopped up with slight alcohol swabs.  After comparing the photos it was blue blown.  This blue color was a mixture of Humbrol 25 and some white paint.  At the tricolor on the fin and the large national symbol on the back....a pattern was made from painter tape using (white H34, red H174, green H131 in this order).  To paint the yellow 60 numbers, I used a thin brush.  The numbers were followed by the white stars, there are three kinds of white stars that can be found on the mock-up rotated to each-other plus the big four uneven-pointed star on the front side. The patterns are made from projector film and were blown op one by one.  After every third one I had to clean the patterns from the paint.  This made my work slower, but the mock-up began to resemble to the airplane on the Fly Day.

The pictures from the original showed that some places the original colors were visible. These places were masked before painting therefore I did the same.  After matt lacquering the antennas and other sensors took their place.  The Pitot-tube is made from an injection needle, the IFF and knife antennas from plastic butter box-top, the angle measurement from cooper plate and the discharger from pulled thread.

I delighted much in it after it became ready, as I do today also.  It got a perpetual parking place in a main location of my cabinet.

Best regards from Hungary

Robi

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Photos and text © by Robert Serfőző