Academy 1/48 Mig-29A - Part 6

Back to part 5.

A New Antenna

It was pointed out to me that some of the Polish Mig-29As are fitted with a new NATO standard IFF antenna on the nose.  After a bit of research I was able to confirm that the aircraft I am building has this feature.  I was also able to find a bunch more photos of my aircraft.

Since neither the kit nor any of the aftermarket stuff has this antenna and given it's quite a prominent feature, I am going to have to scratch build it.  Before doing this I decided to remove the canopy and the HUD to avoid dust getting into places that were hard to clean.

I started by scratch building a platform on the nose.

Getting the curve right was tricky until I noticed that a bottle of Vallejo paint has approximately the same diameter as the nose of the model.  So I wrapped some wet and dry paper around it and sanded it to the right shape.  The metal plate the antenna platform is attached to was made out of lead foil from the top of an old wine bottle (remember when wine came with lead foil to seal in the cork?) which I had kept in case I needed to scratch build various things like harnesses or tarpaulin.

Once I was happy with how this looked I used more lead foil and thin plasticard to make the vanes of the antennas.  A needle in a pin vice was then used to simulate the rivets around the base of the platform.  A total of nine tiny parts made up the antenna assembly.

It's a reasonable representation of the real thing I think.

It was while trying to determine the correct position of the IFF antenna that I realised that Academy have put the IR sensor in the wrong spot.  It should be further to the right and back a bit so that it sits much closer to the canopy.  However, I decided that I was not going to undertake the work to move it so I would have to live with it.

As a Matter of Fact it IS Rocket Science

I gave the model a squirt of paint to see how some of the joins looked.  A few needed attention so I applied some Mr Surfacer and as it was drying I turned my attention to the missiles.  The APU-470 launchers were given some locating pins made of brass tubing.

The AA-11s look great but the tiny photoetched vanes on the nose have a tendency to fling out of the tweezers if you're not careful.  Eduard give you two spares but I lost three :-(.  Since the set comes with four missiles I'll have enough for the two missiles I need for this aircraft built but for a later build I'm going to have to work out how I can replace the missing parts when I run out.

A bit of a clean up of the joins on the kit and this is where I'm up to.

Next time I'll re-scribe missing panel lines, prepare the main canopy and get ready for paint.

On to part 7.