"The Ghost of Moscow" or My Horrible First Attempt
Kommentit
Alex KWelcome back to the hobby. As you already know a) there are MANY of us returnees, b) many things have changed since 20 or 30 years ago, and it is not always easy for us to follow. Take it easy, one step at the time, and HAVE FUN! 👍 👍
SpanjaardIndeed, above all, enjoy the ride. There are no horrible attempts, just different paths to archive a result 😉
and if you have questions, fo not hesitate to ask.
We all have been there 😉
Eric Thorntonlmao I'm in the same boat. Building the Academy MiG-29 right now. Have fun mate!👍 Wish me luck.
Kyle DeHartI'd venture to say i mutilate every kit I touch. I sure have fun though. Lol. You have fun too!
Claude Nolen kirjailijaThanks for all your words of support! I'm not discouraged! I know it will get better. I made a hash of this one. I'm just trying to get it to a point where I can maybe hang it from the ceiling (thereby distancing its warts from the casual observer).
SpanjaardYou can delete if you go to manage album. Also there you can change the order
Spanjaard👍.
in regards to paint, my experience is that less, it is better. some of my early models had so much paint that you can not see the surface details. basically i was using paint as putty, to cover gaps. now i try to use the least amount of paint possible. better 3 very thing layers, rather than a thicker one. i hope it helps.
Spanjaardnot at all 🙂 learned a lot from others here, happy to pass the help to somebody else, that is the beauty of SCM
Album info
The kit was made by a company called Academy. It is a 1/48 scale MiG-29A (kit #2116). The model has been in production since 1993, with few revisions (new parts were added the same year it was released). I started on it in late May 2022. The decals were from a separate kit. They're made by Foxbot, and are actually intended to go on a 1/48 YAK-1B.
This was the first kit I put together in 40+ years, so I'm sure that most of what I have to say wouldn't be useful, interesting or the fault of the kit (but, I'll say it anyway LOL!). This kit is not a good choice to make for a returning modeler. Keep in mind that I don't have any recent experience, so I can only try to remember what kits were like during the era of disco.
The thing that stands out to me is the tiny size of some of the parts. This presented a number of problems for me. The first was obviously trying to manipulate them. A few were just so small that I just didn't use them. There were other parts that were so fragile and thin that they either broke when I tried to snip them from the sprue, or broke off the model during the build by my clumsy hands.
The instructions seemed mostly intuitive, but there were a few parts where I had to reference photos of the aircraft to see exactly where they went. The sprues didn't have any flashing that I noticed. There were a couple parts that were inexplicably attached to runners with excessively thick and long gates (not sure my terminology is correct).
The fit and detail of the parts seemed reasonably okay; perhaps not as good as what I remember from back in the day. I relied heavily on putty.
That brings up the sort of the approach I had with this build. Since I knew I would be a bit ham-fisted I employed a cycle of gluing, puttying, painting, sanding, puttying, sanding, painting. Most of the large parts went through this sort of abuse. My theory being that if you repeat this enough the model will eventually surrender.
My disclaimer for the rest of my comments is that I knew the kit would be my "re-entry disaster." Going into it I just wanted to learn as much as I could before tackling the rest of my small stash; which consists of models I hope will turn out (reasonably) well. This build needed to be just a learning experience for me. If I glued the wings on backwards and painted it purple then so be it. One thing I hoped to discover is what tools and supplies I needed to buy. By all these metrics, the project was a success.
I think the biggest problem I had was the painting. I tried a number of different top paint schemes. I was kinda disappointed with my attempts at freehanding a camouflage pattern (as displayed on the box), and didn't even bother adding the third color. I then had an epiphany that since this was an experimental build that I wasn't really restricted by historical accuracy. I decided to go with what I think would just "look cool." That explains the gloss black (including the cockpit canopy). I thought I'd be cheeky and used regular old hardware store rattle-can paint for the final major colors. One was Behr Premium Black Gloss, and the other was Rustoleum Metallic Finish 7715 Aluminum. I also used hardware store stuff on the armaments. The problem I discovered is that these paints have a tendency to go on too thick (no matter how disciplined I was), form bubbles, cracks and take forever to dry. I got some Tamiya spray-paint, and immediately realized how much better it was. Still, I liked the look of the cheap paint (a very glossy black on top and a neat metallic silver on the belly). But, this would still result in a bad finish. I found that if I left the model in front of a box-fan that the drying process seemed to be quicker and less traumatic. I learned that spray paint actually takes about a week to cure; well after it is "dry." I also learned that there should really be as few coats of paint as possible. What I ended up doing was a cycle of painting and sanding. Sometimes I'd still have blemishes, or see scratches from where I had used a coarse-grit sandpaper. So, I repeated the process, getting progressively more aggressive in the paint removal. I began to scratch the paint off with a scalpel, rub it with automotive brake cleaner, and I even used a rotary tool at one point (which dug a couple holes right thru the body that I had to putty over). The use of the putty gave me the idea of applying a thick layer of putty over most of the central fuselage (where I was having problems getting sandpaper scratch marks out). After sanding I had somewhat of a "clean slate" to work with.
I also thought it would be more appealing to me as a Soviet jet, so I sourced some red star decals. The kit came with East German, German and Iraqi air force decals.
The text decal on the sides reads "The Ghost of Moscow" in Russian. I had them custom made. At the time of this build Russia was in the process of warring against Ukraine. Ukraine had a mythical (possibly fictional) fighter-ace called "The Ghost of Kiev." One cool accessory kit that could be purchased for this kit was a digital blue-ish Ukraine camo decal set depicting The Ghost of Kiev. I actually initially purchased these decals for this model, but ended up selling them to a friend here on Scalemates.
I thought that perhaps this left open the idea of a Russian version of The Ghost. Politically, I have "no horse in this race." So, no political comment is intended by my modification. I just thought that perhaps it would be a creative and unique thing to do.