VPAF MiG-17F

Kit, decal sheet and resin ejection seat, ready to go

Got to do something about the total lack of intake trunking, a little scratchbuilding solves it

Cockpit installed, resin seat painted. Not sure it is fully correct (later removed red ejection grip) but better than kit seat

Ready for closing up..

...almost forget noseweight, so a little balancing act. Quite a lot needed, on top of trunking and below cockpit.

Wings almost ready, fit of lower panels not so good, took quite some filling and sanding

Wings installed and aligned

Canopy masked and ready to install

Landing gear cleaned up and painted

Tailplane installation, reinforced butt joints with metal pin

And ready for the spray booth!

Sprayed with Humbrol Silver...

... and starting with masking. Not. Disaster! Paint comes off with masking tape!

Deep sigh... and oven cleaner to the rescue.

Back to square one. This time I will use Vallejo Metal Color.

And masking begins again. Lots of splotches to mask.

Pfff. Done. Applied some salt on the nose and wing leading edge, see how that works..

Green coat (Humbrol 30) sprayed without problems

Masking removed and coated with Futurish gloss (Pledge Parket Plus). Never seem to be able to get a nice shiny result on a matt coat. Salt a bit overdone.

Decals complete, not that many decals so a short job. Print Scale decals are very nice and very thin, had a couple of them folding up on me... Highlighting panel lines and weathering was done with dark pastel powder.

Final coat with Tamiya Flat Clear and canopy masking tape removed. Nasty surprise under the hood... paint crept under the canopy. Duh!. Luckily easy to remove and some polishing restored everything again. Had to restore paint on part of the framing.

Final assembly, landing gear and doors installed. Shortened nose gear quite a bit, it is 3-4 mm too long.

Replacing gun barrels which I broke off during the build. Replaced the big 37 mm one with thin copper tube.

Exhaust, pitot tubes and antennas installed and painted, and were done!

Kommentit

10 August 2017, 18:44

Hans Zwetsloot
Hi, back again with another VPAF MiG, a MiG-17F this time. The AZ model is nicely detailed but a bit rough around the edges. Nothing major, just more parts clean up to do and gaps to fill and sand. This will be mostly OOB, except for for the addition of intake trunking and a replacement ejection seat. The challenge of this build will be the mottled green paint scheme. Never done that before..... For now I am still poring over all the conflicting reference pictures of Red 2077 I found on the net 🙁.

10 August 2017, 19:00

Ekki
Following.

24 August 2017, 19:48

Hans Zwetsloot
Made good progress, almost there. Changed my mind about the paint scheme and went for Red 2011 instead. Painting did not go as planned, initial silver coat had to come of again as is peeled off immediately when I started masking. No idea why, I did clean it up pretty well before spraying. Second try with different paint went better, though still some paint lifting here and there. Did the salt thingy for the first time, pretty easy and easy to overdo as well 🙂 Decaling, final semi-gloss coat and final assembly still to go.

14 September 2017, 12:08

Łukasz Gliński
Very interesting build&review of the AZ kit. 👍
Good to see I'm not the last one to use the yellow Revell Airbrush enamels 😉
Interesting idea with the oven cleaner, didn't think it would ever work.

14 September 2017, 21:30

Hans Zwetsloot
Thank you and yes, oven cleaner is nasty stuff and really works as paint stripper 🙂 Takes some time though, I usually need 2 or 3 days to fully strip a model and even then paint remains here and there.

15 September 2017, 06:02

Alexander Grivonev
Well that's a funky camo, wondering how it turns out..

15 September 2017, 08:59

Hans Zwetsloot
And there it is, it's done. Pretty happy with the result, although there are quite a few imperfections if you know were to look. Which you don't 🙂. Not an easy kit to build, overall fit is OK-ish, but fit of details like landing gear, wing tanks etc. is not. Luckily the plastic used reacts strongly to the Revell Contacta glue I use, which made all joints quite strong. The kit bit me a few times, not just with the initial silver coat coming off but also the canopy, which had to come off twice due to paint creeping underneath, despite my attempts to seal the join. Nonetheless a great addition to my collection!

17 September 2017, 12:37

Łukasz Gliński
Looks good anyway 👍

17 September 2017, 14:26