1/72 Italeri Mig-29 UB part 2

Here is some progress from last weekend and bit during the week. I thought it might be a good idea to crazy glue some weight into the nose to keep her from being a "tail sitter".After putting the two halves together I noticed a raised seam just behind the cockpit. At first I thought it was a panel line but it is in fact a mold line. It does sort of follow a panel line but it goes right across fuselage in places where no panel line should be. I checked the bottom and the same seem is there too. Fortunately it is not too difficult to get rid of. I just found it rather odd.


Next comes the tedious work of filling gaps and seams. I've used Tamiya putty and a fair bit of sanding. Some panel lines had to be rescribed after.

As an added touch for the canopy I build some review mirrors. I cut short lengths of plastic stip, rounded off the corners and glued a short piece of plastic rod. To keep the little pieces in place I've used a loop of Tamiya tape on a popsicle stick - used this for painting too. I painted the mirrors black then silver where the mirror would be.

Notice that the rod is a little long - this was just for ease of assembly. I trimmed them down before gluing them in place. I also painted the inside canopy frame. I brush painted rather than masking and airbrushing.

In this shot you can just see the mirrors. I think they add a nice touch. I also added what I believe is a hood for the pilot. On some Mig-29s this is blue but photos of the plane I'm doing show it to be grey. This was replicated with plastic strip.

Masked off and ready for painting.

I was thinking that with the wings and tail fins in place I was ready for painting but I forgot about the intakes! Italeri renders these as two parts. Unfortunately the two halves don't join together snuggly on their own which made test fitting a little tricky. However I could see that some filling and sanding would be inevitable.

What I ended up doing was to glue one half down and line it up with the engines then glue the other half down. I still had to play around to get the best join but as you can see the is still some clean-up work to do.
The worst part is the front of the intakes which didn't line up very well at all. On top of this I goofed and glued the intake doors. I should have left them off for sanding and filling. I think I might make some covers with aluminum foil. This will cover up some of the problems and might look neat on a static model anyway.
I put the nozzles together while I was waiting for things to dry. They are not bad looking but I don't believe they are correct for a Mig-29 on the ground. Oh well I'm not going to go nuts correcting that.

GB