MIG 15 by Danstream - Trumpeter 1:48 - Finished

[Ian B]

Hi Dan I have not made a model plane in 30 years!!! So tempted to do this kit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Egilman]

1 hour ago, Danstream said:

I would get a complete airframe showing the unbroken shape of the aircraft.

Option "C" would not give you a complete aircraft, you would lose the 12 to 18 inches the exhaust extends out the tail of the fuselage..... Easy to overcome though, scratch build a replacement exhaust tube....

 

An engine stand is a simple affair as the engine mounts are on the sides and a block rest supports the aft portion of the engine.... Plenty of pics on the net of the basic engine stand for a Klimov VK-1 engine....

 

It's probably the easiest way to display both.....

[Danstream]

18 hours ago, Ian B said:

Hi Dan I have not made a model plane in 30 years!!! So tempted to do this kit.

Hi Ian, let you be tempted, but do not resist much. I find that building aircraft kits is very cool and relaxing (when things go right). Although, one modeller wrote once that building aircraft kits mainly consists in managing unexpected problems. 🙂

Anyhow, if it is the Mig 15 that attracts you, I suggest you make an informed choice between Trumpeter and Tamiya kits. And do not forget that lately also Bronco put on the market a kit of the same scale which seems very promising.

Best regards,

Dan.

[Ian B]

15 hours ago, Danstream said:

Hi Ian, let you be tempted, but do not resist much. I find that building aircraft kits is very cool and relaxing (when things go right). Although, one modeller wrote once that building aircraft kits mainly consists in managing unexpected problems. 🙂

Anyhow, if it is the Mig 15 that attracts you, I suggest you make an informed choice between Trumpeter and Tamiya kits. And do not forget that lately also Bronco put on the market a kit of the same scale which seems very promising.

Best regards,

Dan.

Thanks, I am definitely want to do a Mig 15 because not long ago about a year I had a jet circling quite low over the house and after 5 minutes or so I went to look and is was a 2 seat Mig 15 just in a low holding pattern. I have no ideal why as I was living in the heart of the west country with no airfield for at least 30 _+miles..... I was like a kid with excitement-- my better half -'so what ,another noisy plane'? LOl 

[Danstream]

On 7/27/2021 at 12:01 AM, Egilman said:

Option "C" would not give you a complete aircraft, you would lose the 12 to 18 inches the exhaust extends out the tail of the fuselage..... Easy to overcome though, scratch build a replacement exhaust tube....

Thanks for your comments. Looking at pictures (and at the parts of the model) the protruding part of the exhaust pipe is 2 inches maximum (in full scale), but, clearly, I will include it, just need to find a plastic tube of the right size, probably I will recycle a sectioned drop tank from the spare box.

Cheers,

Dan

[popeye the sailor]

would be a superb display    the engine looks too good to be hidden.

[Danstream]

Hi all,

some more important steps on assembling  the airframe. The fuselage with wings and a tail (not glued yet).

 

 

The fit of the wing roots is OK on the upper side but a bit disappointing on the other side:

 

 

I resorted to fill the gaps with stretched sprue from the kit for a minimal disruption of the surface  details:

 

 

The P-51 drop tank in the background of the picture is waiting to become the new jet pipe to be installed inside the airframe, as anticipated in a post above. The tank was cut at the tapered end and its walls were sanded down to a suitable thickness. Supporting bracketry was improvised from styrene card:

 

 

An annular gap was left between the pipe and the airframe as was seen in pictures:

 

 

I also built some fictional tubing into the wheel bays for added detailing:

 

 

Next, the main parts will be glued together and paintwork can begin.

That's all for now, I need to restart working on my ship, so I am afraid that updates will be even slower if possible. 

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Very nice work  - lovely details.

 

OC.

[Egilman]

Excellent Job, that fills the bill perfectly....

[FriedClams]

Your model is looking very nice Dan.  Great job mitigating the problems you’re finding in the kit.

 

Gary

[popeye the sailor]

nice modification.......  

[Danstream]

Hi all,

after quite some time, during which I worked on my ship model, I am now back to my Mig. I glued all the main parts of the airframe, included the fuselage portions, and spent time on inscribing the lost details. In particular, the joint between the fuselage parts needed few CA filling, sanding and scribing sessions. Then the details which need to be left unpainted were masked, the airframe was readied for the primer by degreasing it with alcohol.

 

 

I sprayed a coat of Mr. Surfacer 1500 which went on nicely leaving a very smooth surface.

 

 

To check the work on the re-scribed details, I applied some Tamiya black panel liner which revealed the lines and gave a more 3D appearance to the model. After few corrections, I sanded all the airframe with wet extra fine sand paper obtaining a very consistently smooth surface.

 

 

 

Now the model starts to look like an aircraft. Few bits to add, the control surfaces, flaps and landing gear covers need also to be primed and camouflage painting can start.

 

Best regards,

Dan.

Edited September 11, 2021 by Danstream

[popeye the sailor]

she's look'in real nice........very nice detail work    glad to see your back working on her!

[Danstream]

Thanks Denis, Glad that you find it nice. I must  say that the most enjoyable part is starting now.

I did not find period pictures of this aircraft wearing a camouflage, hence I will have to improvise the weathering and keep it on a low profile.

Warmest greetings,

Dan.

[popeye the sailor]

I have seen a few wearing camo....

most of what I've seen are silver with color around the nose and tail,  be it red of blue.    North Korea flies these birds as well.   do as I did.......do a search for Mig 15 and look at the images...they might give you ideas.   you will also see that some are at the builder's discretion...their own artistic license.

[Egilman]

9 hours ago, Danstream said:

I did not find period pictures of this aircraft wearing a camouflage, hence I will have to improvise the weathering and keep it on a low profile.

Hi Dan, the basic lowdown on Mig 15 Camo is kind like this...

 

Russian: Overall aluminum, they didn't paint them usually (there are exceptions I know, mostly grey)

Chinese: Mostly aluminum in the early years, Green over Grey mid years, (Korean War) and Green/Grey and brown in later years.....

Vietnamese: Green & Brown camo...

 

All had Grey undersides except for the BMF birds....

 

There were many other that flew them and the colorations are all over the spectrum for them... you would have to research, Example: Egyptian would be sand yellow overall Pakistani would be Green & Brown.... (with grey undersides) Generally satellite countries used them as received....

 

Generally bare metal or grey overall is how they are usually perceived best representing their era which was the '50's....

 

Your bird specifically looks like a mid life bird to me, (second generation) So in general, putting a BMF on it now would remove all the spectacular work you've already done... Light greyish tones are the ticket in my humble opinion.... That would give you a late 50's early 60's Russian or Chinese bird....

 

Beautiful job, the almost polish smooth finish you've done to the base coats, the finish should be spectacular....

Edited September 15, 2021 by Egilman

[Egilman]

Here are some historical schemes..... Second one down is a good historical scheme in which some photographic evidence from the era is available to establish it as a real scheme....

Edited September 15, 2021 by Egilman

[Danstream]

Dear all,
first of all, many thanks for all the help and suggestions that you forwarded to me. At this point, I owe you some clarifications, though. The kit provides decals for a Chinese aircraft with a metallic finish and for a Soviet one sporting a camouflage used during the Korean war. Not being interested in Chinese markings, I rather prefer to finish the model with Soviet markings, hence with a camo livery. Admittedly, a metallic finish might well be more iconic for this plane, however, I would like not to outsource new decals for the soviet markings.

 

The provided decals are suitable for the scheme portrayed in the picture of the RC model posted above by @popeye the sailor. This is a two tones
camouflage (sand-brown and green) with light blue for the under surface. The colors to be used are subject of hot discussions which can be found on the web and which I will summarize below. 

 

My complain about lack of period pictures was not related to the choice of a camouflage scheme, rather to the fact that I usually try to get ideas for the weathering from these pictures. Not having pictures to refer to, I will have to figure out a plausible weathering by myself. Sorry for the confusion that my post I might have generated.

 

@Egilman, indeed, the model reproduces a Mig 15 'bis', which was an improved version introduced after the first appearance of this jet.

 

Coming back to the Soviet camouflage, probably, the unavailability of period pictures is due to the fact that the Soviet intervention in the Korean war had not to be advertised and kept as far as possible secret. Hence few pictures were circulated. It is reported that Soviets did not have standardized tints and the aircraft were painted with colors obtained by mixing basic tints like yellow, red, brown, etc. Therefore, color definitions are indicative only and the exact tints are everyone's calls. If you are really interested on this topic, I suggest you the following articulated and very informative discussion led by a Russian guy, author of a book on the subject, contained in the following link:

 

https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234949599-mig-15-korean-war-camo-colours/

 

As far as the colors that I will use, my choice is with Tamiya acrylic paints and are:

- XF-59 Desert Yellow

- XF-13 J.A. Green, which is a rather 'simple' green

- XF-23 Light Blue, which I will fade with some white.

 

Again, thank you for your interest and help,

kind regards,

Dan.

Edited October 2, 2021 by Danstream
Corrected Tamiya reference

[Egilman]

No problem Dan, it's what we do here...

 

I would go with the info from that discussion as they probably have a thousand times more info than I do.... I know enough to know that there is no definitive info on what the colors were specifically so no one can say your wrong, which one of the authors says himself.... (although he did confirm the BMF and Grey colors on most of the Russian aircraft in Russian service and that the BMF applied was really painted BMF not actual BMF) Also, that although there were rules and specifications for painting one must remember that it was left to the best judgment of the people in the field to mix the paints to get the specified colors.....  Which means you can pretty much come up with any color combination if you don't have the specific ratios used...

 

The authors and researchers also covered that issue as well...

 

And I just found another source and has some very grainy shots of a Russian aircraft in Korea sporting a paint job that at least in greytone pattern is similar to the one posted by Popeye.....

And that's the problem with postwar, (WWII) soviet aircraft coloration, there just isn't sufficient images commonly available to make color decisions on and B&W greytone is nothing to ever judge colors by without documentation.....

 

I would go the same way it appears you have already decided, from the best info available... 

 

Thank you for the link, it's leading to even more info for my archives....

[popeye the sailor]

yea....I saw those color palettes.....but I didn't want to cloud the issue too much.   taking into account that quite a few of the pictures were of models and R/C aircraft.......a lot of them were the modeler's choice.  but that's what I do......I look at images and something will eventually catch my eye.  shades of gray and bare aluminum are the more dominant choices.  Egilman is correct in that assumption.......as far back as the early biplanes,  they rolled them out of the factory with a given paint scheme.  when they hit the field,  whoever didn't like what they got,  decided to personalize it at their discretion.  there was a lot of field paint,  and they used whatever they had available.   the same went for any modifications they wanted to make...from thicker armor in places.....to even a cup holder    we're only the 'devil's advocates' here........whatever you come up with will be super!

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I applied a grey color to the wheel wells and added some oil colors for reproducing some grime inside the wells.

 

 

 

Then I masked all the bays and details that need not to be painted with the underside color:

 

 

To render the light blue more interesting with some tonal variations, I started with an uniform dark color. I chose the Mr. Color Extra Dark Sea grey which sprays beautifully and dries with a slight shine.

 

 

Then, I sprayed random blotches of matt white on top of the EDSG followed by wet sanding everything. Unfortunately, I forgot to take pictures of this step. After that, I started spraying thin layers of the light blue paint to gradually cover and uniformize the marbled surface. The light blue was obtained by a mix of Tamiya XF-23 (2/3) and flat white (1/3). This is a picture that I took after few layers.

 

 

At the end, I obtained a slightly non-uniform coverage of the light blue. Later on, I will add a little post-shading with a darker tone of the blue.

 

 

 

That is all for now, next I will tackle the upper surfaces.

Best regards,

Dan.

[Danstream]

Hi all,

after quite some time, I am able to post some progress on this build. I had to apply the camouflage with several iteration because I did not like the colors which I originally chose. I will post a little of the history, just to show why it took so long. The first picture shows the airframe ready to be painted. Surface was degreased, lower surface were masked and the camo pattern was outlined with a pencil.

 

 

Then I applied the lighter color, the Tamiya XF-59 Desert Yellow:

 

 

However, I did not like how this color came out, being it too pink, too similar to the one used during the gulf war. Nevertheless, I went on with the green, the XF-13, which was instead too similar to a NATO green. The result was not very Soviet-like, in my view.

 

 

At the end, I took the bold decision of removing all that camouflage work. For the new light brown I started from a RAF Dark Earth which I lightened with white and yellow while for the green I made a 50-50 mix with the previous XF-13 and XF-5, which is a brighter green. This time, I tried to spray the camouflage bands freehand with my airbrush. The final result was declared OK after many touch-ups to correct the most obvious oversprays.

 

 

 

Finally, the masking tapes were removed from the lower surfaces and the paint was wet sanded:

 

 

 

 

Now, I will have only to address the few hundred defects and it will be ready for the glossy paint.

 

Best regards,

Dan.

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by Danstream

[popeye the sailor]

WOW!  love how you 'hazed' the camo...........that came out really sweet!    good top and bottom side separations and all!  not sure what you calling defects............great paint and nicely done!

[Danstream]

Hi Denis,

really happy that you like my paintwork. It is not perfect though, the defects are little oversprays, points where the paint is not covering well, etc. However, above all, the thing that bother me most is the last brown stripe on the fuselage, just at the root of the fin which looks much narrower than the other ones. I am thinking of adjusting it, but there are some risks involved, you know the saying 'perfect is the enemy of good' ...

I will let it sink for a while.

Thank you and best regards,

Dan.

 

[Danstream]

Hi all, little progress, I am just fixing paint defects. Eventually I modified the camo stripe which I did not like.

 

 

 

 

Next, I will spray a coat of gloss clear paint.

 

Best regards,

Dan

 

 

[Old Collingwood]

Very nice dan  -  that  camo looks lovely.

 

OC.

[FriedClams]

Really nice progress Dan.  I admire your tenacity in getting the paint just the way you want it.  It sure looks great to me.

 

Gary

[popeye the sailor]

nicely done  

[Danstream]

Dear all,

went on with the finish of the camouflage and brushed on a layer of floor polish to obtain a smooth surface in preparation for the decals. The floor polish is very quick to be applied, can be brushed, it is very thin, self-leveling and compatible with the Tamiya paints. Actually I brushed two layers on the location of the decals.

 

 

It was followed by a very light wet sanding which removed any remaining roughness. Then the decals were applied and a layer of Tamiya gloss X-22 sealed the paint and the decals. This version of MiG-15 is decorated with just few decals.

 

 

 

 

The decals are sufficiently thin, with little carrier visible and conformed well to the surface.

 

 

 

However, in my opinion, they have a shortcoming in the saturation of their colors. The red tone, which is the predominant one for this aircraft, does not look as a full saturated red, and appears slightly discolored, almost pinkish:

 

 

I think this is a shame for an aircraft of the Soviet Red Star 🙃. Unfortunately, I will have to live with that. Now the gloss paint needs to cure well for a couple of days before I can start working with oil washes for highlighting panels and details.

 

Meantime, I removed the first mask from the landing light in the sect of the air intake.

 

 

Now, I will have also to start working on the remaining parts like the landing gears, the drop tanks, etc.

This is all for now, thanks for following,

best regards, 

Dan.

Edited November 6, 2021 by Danstream

[mtaylor]

Since you're weathering it and it's not in the snow camo, the red decals look just a bit faded like would in an operational unit.