MiG-21MF Academy

I want to introduce you to my old work from 2016. I started collecting this firewood back in the 13th year.
I got this model thanks to my good friend.
The kit consisted of a set of 21MF from Academy in a special version with a "fish" on the entire side, metal parts and photoetshed, in addition to it a comprehensive set from SMK – a vacuum canopy, cabin, resin on niches, hump, keel, baffle and decal on two ceremonial Czechs. Also, a fairing with a keel from a quickbust and wheels from a Carriage were attached to all this happiness.
I started with the cockpit. The resin gathered somehow, and surprisingly, the cabin did not fit together with the front niche from the same box. Both the base of the cabin and the niches had to be heavily undermined, apart from the fact that the cabin was difficult to get into the plastic. The plastic of the nose itself is assembled perfectly. The only good thing would be to provide a detachable cone, but even in Edik there is no such thing (
The central part of the fuselage.
The stamping plates above the landing gear niches were moved forward, and the fuselage was shortened by 2 or 3 mm, I don't remember exactly now. It took a long time and with difficulty to adjust the resin fuselage part of the landing gear niches, after which it was all glued together.
In the tail section, the amount of work was significantly less – 2 mm was removed in the nozzle area and the nozzle edge was sharpened.
Wings.
Perhaps the most painful part after the keel with gargrot. It was necessary to grind off the relief and a certain volume from the inner sides of the wing consoles in order to cram the resin there. Later I became convinced that it was necessary to paint right away.…
Keel and gargrot.
These parts probably took the most pure working time. The gargrot is from quickbust due to its longer length (the QMS was shorter even than the shortened fuselage by a decent 5mm), but the keel decided to install from the QMS.
It all started with the gargrot – since it was also lower than necessary – I had to make a spacer, and then I had to suffer for a long time with the coupling of the gargrot and the fuselage. Unfortunately, it was not possible to bring it to the sane edge.
After the ordeal with gargrot, I had to tinker with the keel, he also just didn't want to get back into place. However, now I can say that I should have adjusted it better, it would have been much less of a problem. However, "I would know where I would fall..."
Pilot's lantern
If the canopy of the lamp fell into place quite well, then the sliding part had to be adjusted decently, which I was very surprised by. I did not use the vacuum lamp because it turned noticeably yellow, and it did not differ in geometry.
Landing gear racks.
The racks from the set are just terrible. I decided that as it is, I would never leave them. As a result, I shortened the main struts to about 3-5mm, redesigned the axis – made it their needle segment, tried to depict the delicate design of the chassis leaf.
The nose stand was also shortened and redesigned to better match the prototype.
Coloring.
I chose the color option for a long time – between Polish fish and Czech parade, painted under the Czech flag.
In the end, I settled on the Czech for several reasons: 1. The "Fish" is designed for non-sawn plastic. 2. The Czech still looks more interesting, and the coloring scheme is more complicated.
Everything turned out to be difficult with this option. The photos seem to be quite a few, but their quality is not so good, and the color schemes are somewhat screwed up. I tried to paint first of all based on photos.
The main color is silver titanium from Tamiya, applied to glossy black from the same manufacturer. Red is the standard X-5 from Tamiya, as well as blue – they fit well with the colors of the prototype and decals. The white for the tail was slightly diluted with black to give a less vivid shade.
The gargrot, the lantern, the stripes under it and the keel are painted with paints. The numbers 11 are also applied on the keel with the help of masks. I didn't use the decal because of the shifting colors of the shadows under the numbers, and if there were shadows themselves, they were very small.
The nozzle is painted with a mixture of paints – silver titanium, black and a little gold titanium from Tamiya.
Decals.
In general, the quality is good – they do not disintegrate, they weld well, but surprisingly with different thicknesses. If the coats of arms, side numbers and pegasi fit perfectly, were well welded and were very thin, then the OZ turned out to be noticeably thicker and welded worse, although all the details are on the same sheet.

The pendants are taken from Edward's sets.
PTB – there are no relatives against the background of edik – noticeably thicker, disproportionate and without options for overdrinking.
Pylons are native... easier to throw away. The external pylons from edik to PTB are unchanged. For the internal ones, the external pylons were taken and lengthened by 4mm. A variant of the pylons is taken from the photo.
There are enough jambs in both assembly and painting. But the project was already so long delayed, a lot was being completed/redone/restored (I restored only one sock of the cone twice).
In general, I decided that a tit in the hand is better, and the best is the enemy of the good.
So I brought it to the end in this form and I'm happy)