Introduction
I love the Mig 29 - actually it's not an exclusive thing; I really love all the Russian cold war jets. So I thought, why not? - let's build one...a small one...not a real one...although that would be pretty cool.The Mig 29, NATO codename Fulcrum, was developed by the Mikoyan design bureau in the 1970s to counter the new fourth generation fighters being developed in the US. It entered service with the Soviet Air Force in 1983 and is still being manufactured today. Over 30 nations now operate or have previously operated the aircraft. Interestingly with the collapse of the Soviet Union a number of Warsaw pact countries joined NATO bringing this cold war baby with them. It's one of these that I'll be building - the Polish Mig 29A, Red 77 shown below. I love it's 'well used' appearance; it should be fun to try to recreate.
The Kit
I'll be using the Academy 1/48 Mig 29A kit. I've had this in my stash for about 20 years and It's one of those kits that is still available quite cheaply. With a little bit of work can turn into a really stunning representation of the aircraft.
The kit comes on 6 sprues of grey plastic and one clear sprue. As I mentioned earlier my version of this kit is quite old (in fact it was bought shortly after Academy released it in 1992) so the mouldings look crisp. While there are a few ejection pin marks in some tricky places (inside the intake trunking, insider wheel well doors etc) there's not a lot to complain about. A quick check of the Eduard Mig 29UB released in 2011 (they use the Academy molds) shows that the molds have stood the test of time.
Sprue A contains the main fuselage sections, the vertical and horizontal tails and landing gear doors. The panel lines are all nicely recessed and should take a pin wash well once the model has been painted. There is a tiny bit of flash at the top of one of the vertical tails but this should clean up easily. Of more concern are the wheel bay doors which all have a nasty ejection pin mark on the inside which detracts what would have otherwise been some lovely interior detail.
Sprue B and D contain the forward fuselage, undercarriage and exhausts. This brings us to one of the criticisms of the kit, namely the shape of the nose - it's just wrong. It pinches in towards the middle, like its approaching an inflection point (remember that from maths kiddies?) whereas the real thing has a more graceful curve. The exhausts are OK but the injection gates will make cleanup difficult. A nice touch on the wheels is the lettering molded onto the tires.
Sprue C contains the wings and the intake trunking. The wings look good. In order to gt a good join there are some ejection pin marks which will need taking care of. The intake trunking also has some nasty ejection pin marks on the inside which will be a lot of work to clean up or you could build the model with the FOD ramps down or with FOD covers on which would hide the inside of the trunking.
The last two sprues E & F contain weapons and pylons, some cockpit parts and other small details. You get two AA-8 Aphid missiles, two AA-11 Archer missiles and two AA-10 Alamo A missiles. Detail on these is fairly crude and they could do with replacing. The fuel tank could also do with some attention. On the Mig 29 the APU vents underneath the aircraft and is obstructed by the external tank. Instead of re-engineering this arrangement the Russians decided to make the vent go through the external tank meaning there there's a whopping big hole underneath which Academy have represented as a raised plastic disc.
The clear parts are OK. There's a bit of distortion when you look through them but this can be taken care of by dipping them in a clear gloss.
All in all it's a reasonable kit which you can still pick up for $25-$30 on eBay.
The Extras
I'm not content to build the run of the mill straight-out-of-the-box version of this aircraft so I am going to add some extras.
Remember I said the nose was the wrong shape? Well that's going to be taken care of with a replacement from Quickboost. I am also going to replace the cockpit, airbrake and wheel wells with resin improvements from Aires. The wheels and the burners are going to get updated with the Brassin versions and the landing gear will get replaced with white metal from Scale Aircraft Conversions. But wait there's more...
The AA-10 Alamo As will be replaced with AA-10 Alamo Cs and the AA-11 Archers will also be replaced with resin versions from Brassin. The AA-8 Aphids will get an overhaul from the Eduard 'Big Ed' set which will also be used for other internal and external details. But we're not done yet...
There's decals from Aztec Models and a mask set to make sure my canopy looks the business.
This is a big project and could take me some time to complete. I hope my skills are up to it.
In the next part I'll start work on the cockpit.
