Before starting with the painting I fixed the main wing fins into the positions indicated.
These fit into slots indicated along the wings. The instructions show that you have to gouge out a slot for each of them to have a solid fixing. A panel lining tool will be fine for this at the parts are very thin.
I just trickled some of the HpH resin along the line of the fin applying it from the front.
Fixed with tape and left overnight.
Not an awful lot to say about this stage. I decided to paint the airbrake interior and front undercarriage bay later.
Here are some of the applicators that I used for the paintwork – so far.
Alclad provided the undercoat in their Micro Filler Grey. This was polished to as near as a shine as I could get.
Two coats of Alclad White Aluminium were sprayed on. Both coats were polished with the smoothest sanding stick until you could feel a completely smooth finish. I then applied a mix of White Aluminium and engine grease (in oils) to the underside. This did not make a significant difference in colour to the top. I am returning to the underside later.
I then added Alclad Chrome to the White Aluminium and sprayed that over the top. I sprayed a fairly thick coat of this.
Then I had been playing with some way of picking out the panel lines etc without damaging the Alclad surface. Whilst polishing this coat I noticed that the cloth became blackened with the paint being removed. This was filling the panel lines.
So, I mixed the polish, Microgloss, with powdered pastel black (or D/brown if you wish)
This with the help of various polishing materials smoothed the surface and filled the panel lines – all this without having to use shading or pre-shading, which I think gives a very strange look and which is never really evident on real aircraft.
Alclad does take a lot of “working” in as much as you can polish quite vigorously without damaging the surface.
The different tones were achieved by more or less polishing.
Most of the MiGs in service appear to have been left outside and suffered as a result.
There is still quite a bit of work to try to create a slightly oxidised surface texture. I have as yet not really solved the problem.
I have not tackled the underside as yet apart from some basic polishing.
