Part 2: The Build

In my First Look review, I thought that this kit would be a fairly straightforward build, based on the initial review of the parts and the breakdown. Once I got into the actual build, I found that there were some issues beyond what were previously anticipated. The biggest problem for me turned out to be the simplified instructions. Even though many builders feel that instructions are often not too necessary, in the case of this kit with it's somewhat unusual parts breakdown and multiples of small parts and assemblies, the instructions are lacking. Their failure is to breakdown the build into small groupings (lots of assemblies crammed into each drawing) and also in the drawings themselves. For example, the angle shown for the landing gear assemblies makes it difficult to truly determine where all of the parts are to be attached and ultimately (mostly with the nose gear) exactly where it mounts on/on the wheel well assembly.

The kit is lacking detail in the cockpit areas and, to this end, I did a little fudging. True Details manufactures a resin cockpit for the F-94 Starfire and I've found this to be a good basis for use in many 1/72 jet aircraft kits. After cutting the front and rear sections apart, the cockpit set actually fit with almost no need for carving and adjusting. The kit instrument panel neither has any raised detail or instrument decals, so this was supplemented with on old PE MiG-29 instrument panel and painted accordingly (Soviet blue-green). To finish off the cockpit and add some accuracy, a set of TD K-36 ejection seats were painted and put in place.

The front wheel well was assembled (three pieces) and then put into place in the lower forward fuselage section. When it came time to sandwich the upper and lower portion of the front fuselage, I found that there was some warpage, causing both a twisting of the lower portion and a poor alignment of the edges of the fuselage. To help with the alignment, I added some spreader bars and strip plastic as alignment aids. This took care of most of the edge-to-edge alignment, but some filling and rescribing was still required. Approximately an ounce of weights were added in the radome area to in ensure the kit would sit down on the nose gear.

The rear fuselage section goes together fairly well (7 piece assembly), but be sure to add the main gear well tubs prior to gluing the top onto the side assemblies. I managed to miss this in the instructions, but was able to get them in place properly after the fact with a little creative thinking. The seams here can be greatly minimized with some careful dry fitting. During this part of the build, you'll also notice that there is nothing between the afterburner flame holder and the exhaust opening at the back of the fuselage. Here I added some proper diameter brass tubing to fill the emptiness. This required some enlarging of the afterburner openings, but the improvement was worth the effort.

With all of the major assemblies glued together and some required filling, sanding and rescribing completed, the wings were attached. Due to some poor alignment and sanding on my part, there were some gaps that needed to be corrected. Most of this was done with some additional sanding and then glued in place with Tenax-7. Again, minor gaps were filled with Tamiya putty, sanded and rescribed. The vertical stabilizers were next and gave little problems. I chose to wait with the horizontal stabilizers until after the painting was done. I'd initial glued these in place, but the join here is weak and I managed to break both loose while handling the fuselage. The canopy parts were all dipped in Future and allowed to dry overnight. Once masked, they were attached to the fuselage with Testor's clear parts glue and again allowed to dry for approximately 24 hours. The clear areas were then given a coat of Russia Blue/Green (interior color) and more dry time. The kit was painted in Tamiya Light Grey overall, with Dark Grey used on the nose cone and various required panels along the aircraft. Tamiya Nato Black was then sprayed on for the antiglare shield and also used on the tires. The toughest assemblies to get sorted out were the landing gear legs, both main and nose. The parts are well detailed, but also very delicate. I managed to break one of the main nose gear components while cutting it (I thought I was being careful enough!) loose from the sprue.

Also the aforementioned instructions issues came back again here. Ultimately all gear legs were assembled and ready to mount into the wheel wells. Again, complications. The main gear legs were too wide to fit in the wells where the mounting holes were located. I had to carve out a section of the wheel well and also add some brass pins to the gear legs and drill a hole in the side of the well to improve the strength of the mounting points. The nose gear, I figured out after the fact, should mount in some notches on the bottom edge of the nose gear well, but these were filled in when I used Tenax-7 to glue the well onto the lower nose section. I ended up adding a small block of styrene onto the roof of the nose well and attaching the nose gear a little deeper into the well than it should have been, hence the slightly downward angle on the front of the aircraft. As previously noted, the landing gear is delicate and nicely detailed, but the trade-off is that is also fragile, so care must be taken when moving the completed kit.

I sprayed the entire airframe with Testor's Gloss Cote and, once dry, applied the decals. I was surprised to find that the decal instructions show marking for 4 different aircraft, but ICM only supplies decals for 2 aircraft, one of these not even being on the instruction sheet. The decals went down well with some Micro-Sol with the exception of the blue "74" on the right side of the nose. I managed to fold it slightly while positioning and could not get it straightened out after that. Next I applied a simple wash with a mixture of dark gray oil paint thinned with Turpenoid. This highlighted a few misses in my rescribing of which I corrected what I could. After another overnight drying session everything was sprayed with Testor's Dull Cote, completing the airframe.

The missile options on the kit are quite complete and these items go together nicely. I chose to skip the smaller "dogfight" missiles and stick with the bigger, long range intercept options. All were sprayed white and the, for the larger missiles, black bands were masked and painted per my references. To improve attachment, all of missiles had a small piece if brass wire inserted, with an associated hole in the fuselage or wing pylon, and attached with super glue. The wing tanks were also given the same treatment. After attaching all of the armament, the small probes, antennae, and nose pitot were attached. These are all very finely detailed for the scale. Overall this kit presented some challenges that, in hindsight, may have been minimized with a little more attention to the minimalistic instructions and forethought. In the completed state, the kit does look the part of the big, brutish interceptor that the Russians are famous for. From my limited references, the dimensions are quite close and, with the full armament choices supplied in the kit, looks ready to launch and chase down some invading foreign aircraft. While I can't recommend this kit to beginners due to the noted concerns, I feel that a builder with a few short run kits under their belt should be able to tackle this one and come out with a nice representation of the MiG-31. Thanks again goes out to IPMS, Dragon Models USA and ICM for providing this build sample.

Information, images, and all other items placed electronically on this site are the intellectual property of IPMS/USA ®.