SPA Modeler

LyleW wrote:Nice. Neither my kids or grand kids showed ,any interest.

Neither does my son...

So about a month ago I pulled out an old sidelined barely started shelf queen. It’s a Chinese clone of the Academy Mig-21, but modified into their Chengdu F-7B variant. I had built the basic cockpit, wings, afterburner area, and vertical stabilizer, but not done any painting. I figured it might be a good one to get the mojo flowing again. So I started some painting at that time, then this past weekend I finished the painting and on Tuesday I started gluing things together in the fuselage. Yesterday I cleaned up the fuselage seam then added the wings and empennage. By early afternoon I had something that looked like a Mig!





In all honesty the kit is a soup sandwich accuracy wise. They got the nose contours all wrong, using the wider intake of the Fishbed D, instead of the more tapered nose of the Fishbed C. But it’s an easy build, and it’s helping me get back in the groove…

Nice work Stik!

Thanks Mike. It’s not gonna be anything fancy, but it will get me to finish something, and knock down my sidelined roster by one. A win/win, even if it is a less than desirable kit.

Yes I can see what you mean by the nose shape, but otherwise it looks pretty good - such an iconic Cold War aircraft!

Great to see you back at the bench Carlos!

Thanks Stuart. Feels good to be back oat the bench again. As far as the nose goes, it would take a major surgery to correct it. I did cut back the shock come a bit to correct that, but all those major surgeries on projects tend to slow me down and contribute to me losing interest in projects lately… I’ll be doing more “go with what you’ve got” for the next while… maybe with a minor tweak here and there though…

That's a good way of looking at it. I honestly think with some kits, especially the short run and older stuff, it's worth just forgetting about accuracy etc. and concentrating on just enjoying the kit for the kits sake, and building it as the kit makers intended it to be built, maybe even giving it a whif scheme for the hell of it. That's what I did with my Airfix Mig-15.

Stuart that is how I build 98% of my models. There's too many to build and not enough time so why "waste" it on difficult and sometimes indistinguishable changes? I want to get mine done.

Honestly, if it's close enough for me, I'll build it as is. If it's a correction that I can easily make (like the bulges on the Prowler) then I'll do it.

Just getting started. Trying out Mission Models paint and the hairspray chipping technique so expect a disaster