MiG-21F-13 - Syria - 1967
Comments
MariusThank you so much guys!
I hope that the extra info helps those in need who are interested in the subject.
Michael KohlExcellent NMF. Did you just paint it or did you alter it afterwards?
MariusThank you so much Sergej and Michael for the very nice words!
@Michael: I used only minimal weathering, so all effects are entirely made by the airbrush. I was experimenting with new paints and I am trying to move a bit away from the Alclad Polished Aluminium which I used in this build here for example: MiG-21PFM - Vietnam - Red 5020 | Album by Redicus (1:72)
I used this time with similar results as base Alclad High Speed Silver, which I am delighted of. Basically it really evens out most of those small imperfections, but you need to leave it dry properly (>12h) to get the proper effect. But unless you're painting British aircraft of the 50's (which the paint is meant for) you cannot leave it like that, it really needs shading.
Afterwards, I used Dark Aluminiun as shading almost everywhere, but from rather far away without any proper masking. I used a small piece of paper as ad-hoc mask which I moved as I tried from far away to recreate some shadows. Basically the pure High Speed Silver colour can only be seen on the nose right now, everything else is shading. It was an experiment, not perfect but I learned a lot.
MariusI tried to edit my comment to add more info, but too late. Here it goes:
When you're using Polished Aluminium or similar products, you should get a perfect shiny surface with inherently darker spots as shadows/less lightened areas (depending on light). It sounds realistic so far, but any other layer of any type of metallic paint you want to apply on top of that shiny Polished Aluminium will make it just matt/opaque, making it look bad somehow. I found it difficult to shade or work with Polished Aluminium in a second step.
Of course, in reality there are strakes of grime and dirt and oil which are making even a perfect NMF paint look opaque in the sunlight, but these are only local effects for operational aircraft (unless the machine is VERY old and the panels themselves became matt). Overall, I am thinking about the general metallic aspect here, which in 1:72 is so challenging due to the always imperfect surface texture.
The reason I tried this new recipe (pure experiment of my own) is that you have more tolerance to surface imperfections and you have more free hand for shading without ruining the shiny metallic effect. Like this, your model should look like a whole at the end without weird opaque spots in the middle of a realistic metallic finish. The Dark Aluminium (Xtreme Metal) has a similar level of reflection as the Alclad High Speed Silver, therefore the two are somehow compatible together, one being the shadow, the other being the bright effect.
Also, as a last personal comment: regardless of production quality, no aircraft (regardless of origin) had perfectly flat or curved panels. Even small-waved elastic panel buckling (caused by panel size tolerace or tolerance of rivet placements) can cause different light reflections in the same panel, therefore different darker shades. I have this one picture in mind of a metallic Vietnamese MiG-21 photographed at night with a flash, where this effect was so obvious. Maybe I will find that picture.
Sergej IMarius, thanks for the explanation, how did you then protect the NMF before decaling, if at all?
MariusThank you Finn so much!
@Sergej: I used Future/Pledge for sealing. But the model is less shinny and looks more realistic in reality than in these photographs (due to lightning). I know some people prefer the more matt or semi-matt Aluminium for more realism. The Dark Aluminium (Xtreme Metal) doesn't have any particularly high mechanical resistance and it comes off easily if you grab the model too often, gloves or not (ask me how I know this), so the sealing is a must.
But I think I will be applying in the future some minuscule spots of Dark Aluminium on top of High Speed Silver before the general shading by using those known stencils/masks with small holes. See for example this model in 1:48:
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But those spots need to be VERY small for 1:72 🙂. It's a learning curve and experimenting is important I guess 🙂.
Michael KohlMarius, thanx for your elaboration. Those technical details and fellow modellers experiences are very helpful.
JohnVery nice NMF finish. Making a good one is a real pain. There are so many places to go wrong and so few to go right, it's like threading a needle but looks like you have done it here. 👍
MariusThank you guys! I indeed wanted to achieve a somewhat shinny one.
John, true, especially in 1:72 it's so challenging to do the weathering of any NMF. I know it's not perfect but I think I found one NMF recipe for my own taste.
JohnI've been trying my own recipes too, with mixed success. I found that nothing sticks to the high-shine Alclad shades. I found what looked to be the perfect realistic aluminum which was one of the other alclad shades over polished aluminum as it had the right degree of shine, but also the dull effect of real metal. The only problem was it would come off just by looking at it, so you couldn't decal or weather it. Coating it with a sealer coat just made it look like silver paint again. Marbling different tones to the gloss black base coat also did not work, but that may have just been poor application of the marbling. Still working on it, but I think it might work.
Album info
My topic is the MiG-21F-13 number 2540 of the SyAAF as (probably) seen in June 1967 during the Six Day War.
On the 5th of June 1967, only the Syrian Army was mobilised and ready for action while the SyAAF was neither mobilised nor put on alert. Furthermore, al-Assad dictated that the Air Force should be conserved and held back for home defence. Hours before the Six Day War started, the SyAAF had 3 Squadrons operating MiG-21s, possesing 42 aircraft in total (34 operational): out of the 3 Squadrons, two were equipped with the MiG-21F-13s (No. 5 Sq. - Dmeyr and No. 9 Sq. - Tiyas/T4) and one with the newer FLs.
Nevertheless, the morale of the SyAAF was very high prior to the 5th of June 1967 with pilots having gained combat experience during several earlier skirmishes with the IDF. Interviews and extensive research found in "Arab Migs, Volume 3" by Tom Cooper and David Nicolle are revealing a very different picture of how the SyAAF performed during the Six Day War. Contrary to the Western perception along the past decades, the SyAAF was by no means destroyed in the first days of the war, since the already prepared plan of evacuating the SyAAF jets to the more northers AFB was applied in the right moment (presumably outside IDF reach) after the first Israeli attacks against Syrian air bases. The surviving aircraft could later be scrambeled for close air support or defending the military targets close to the Israeli border.
Intense dogfights occured between the IDF and SyAAF, with the SyAAF presumably achieving something like a positive score in air combats (not counting ground losses), according to "Arab Migs, Volume 3". Unlike stated in older publications or various color profiles, the SyAAF MiG-21s did not have any camouflage painting in 1967. The Syrian MiG-21s were left in their so called natural metal finish with still no roundel applied on the fuselage from the very beginning.
Regarding the applied insignia, the SyAAF had returned in 1961 once more to the green contour instead of the red contour for both the fin flash and roundels. These markings were maintained until 1963 and coincided with the deliveries of the MiG-21F-13s. Although the insignia changed again after 1963 (back to the red contour but with only 2 green stars), numerous literature sources are mentioning that some SyAAF still carried the old green insignia as late as the Six Day War. Therefore, my educated guess was that some MiG-21F-13s maybe had flown in the Six Day War with the older insignia. Unfortunately for my plan, even more recent evidence is showing rather the contrary.
The "Arab MiGs Volume 2" or the freshly released "MiGs in the Middle East, Volume 2" of Tom Cooper and co-authors (books which I didn't have at the time of building this model) are showing several color profiles of Syrian MiG-21F-13s, some of them having the air intakes painted red, red rudders and even red wing tips similar to the contemporany Syrian MiG-17s as of the UAC identification directive. All of the Syrian MiG-21F-13s depicted there already had the new insignia with the red contour, therefore it's rather unlikely that any of the not so numerous Syrian MiG-21F-13s have flown in the Six Day War with the green insignia.
With other words, my model rather depicts how a Syrian MiG-21F-13 looked like in 1963-1964 and probably not how it looked like in the Six Day War (as I initially planed), but I think I can live with that for now.
Among many other consequences of the Six Day War, all Egyptian and Syrian military aircraft received camouflage painting immediately after June 1967 (see for example my other Egyptian MiG-21F-13 model: MiG-21F-13 - Egypt - 1973 | Album by Redicus (1:72)). The MiG-21F-13 served in the SyAAF until the very late 1970s.
Group Build
15. March until 31. December 2021