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First of all, I want to start
this construction article by saying that I didn’t know there was a 1/48 Mig-25
until about three years ago while navigating the Internet and I discovered that
Revell released one back in the 70s, which wasn’t a bad, but is out of
production. Well, without knowing
how the model looked like I wanted to have one. Thus, one day, while checking
out the latest on the Hyperscale Plane Trading board I purchased one along
with a 1/48 Monogram EA-6B Prowler for ten dollars each.
One of the main reasons why I
bought the kit, besides the low price, was that I have always liked the Mig-25
even though for many people this aircraft is not as good as it was thought at
first. I like its shape, its story and speed.
Few days after, I received
the kit in a such a small box that I thought it wasn’t an actual 1/48-scale model
compared to the Prowler box. First impressions upon opening the box were mixed.
The box contains about 90 parts in medium gray plastic and one clear sprue containing only a two
piece canopy. The kit has few raised panel lines,
of which I
would say, 90% are in wrong locations compared to reference drawings.
However, when I tried to dry fit the kit, I realized that construction
could be very straightforward. Moreover,
the kit really looks like an early version Mig-25P, which is the most important
aspect to me. After some minutes of
inspection, I put the kit aside for about a year for dust collecting, waiting
for some spare time to build it.
I finally had some time to start
with this project and here is what happened.
I usually don’t pay attention
to dimensions or extra detailing and build models straight out of the box.
However, this time I wanted to build an accurate Mig-25 as possible since
I believe none of the big companies as Hasegawa, Tamiya, Monogram or Academy
will do a new tooling in 1/48 scale of this important aircraft in the near
future.
Unfortunately, I don’t have any
in-process photos, because I hadn't thought of posting this article on the Internet.
I have some pictures of the finished model and some details which may be
of use to you in your future Mig-25 project.
Step 1
Since I wanted to do an accurate
Foxbat, the first step was to check the kit dimensions against scale drawing.
The drawing were scaled up to match 1/48 scale and then compared with the
dimensions of the kit, which resulted to be very accurate in overall length and
span, but the wings and tail planes proved to be wider.
Step 2
The second step was the assembly
of main components. I glued the
wings halves, rear fuselage halves, tail fins, radome cone, wheels (except for the front fuselage, which couldn’t be glued yet, because I didn’t have the
cockpit ready yet). I glued the
fuselage and wings in sections to prevent misalignment.
I didn’t have any big fit problems.
Step 3
The next step was to trim the
wing and tail planes. Unfortunately, I don’t remember exactly the dimensions
of the strip I cut to the wing exactly, but I know it was the complete leading
edge slat of the kit. Regarding the
tail planes, I cut about 1/8 of the front. After, I had to sand the front part
of the wings and tail planes to get the leading edges to be thin as they were
before, which was done with care and patience.
The sanding of the tail planes was simple because they were thinner. I
mostly used a steel file and Micro-Mark tadpole sanders.
When I finally got the shape that
I wanted, I had to move the wings forward exactly the distance I cut to the
wings. Unfortunately, moving the wings forward resulted in a nasty gap about ¼”
long along the original slot that held the wings to the fuselage on each side.
I used some small pieces of styrene and Cutting Edge Modelworks Putty to
fill the gap and mold the original shape. I left them dry for about half an hour
and then sanded and polished them.
Step 4
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right to see larger image |
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| The next step was the
removal of the wingtips. The kit wingtips are accurate in diameter, but they
were shorter and were located a little bit behind. I removed them from the kit and
scratch built new ones. I used some
plastic rods of one of the spruces from the kit and sanded them to get the desired
shape and length and added new lights. They were glued to the wings, filled and
sanded. See picture of finished wingtips. |
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Step 5
| The next step was
the removal of raised panel lines and scribing of new ones. This was a time
consuming step, because as I stated before, the kit has few panel lines and
unfortunately almost all of them are in wrong locations.
The only ones that matched the drawing I was using were the ones on the
tailfins, and again they are not 100% accurate. I removed all raised panel lines
of the kit and scribed new ones as per drawings. I used a pencil and ruler to
measure the drawings panel lines and then drew them on the kit.
This step took me
about two months to complete, one hour here and one hour there. Of course, some days I didn’t do anything to the kit at
all. For removal of the raised
panel lines I used 400-grit sandpaper. For scribing, I used a Squadron scribing
tool most of the time and a X-Acto knife in some spots only.
For curved shapes I used transparent tape as guide.
For circles, squares, oval, and other special shapes I used architectural
plastic templates. One thing that “eased” this step was that the plastic is
very soft and most of the surfaces are flat. |
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on image below to see larger image |
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| In addition to
scribing the panel lines, I also scratch built the flaps. The flaps of the kit
are too short and too wide. Thus, I
filled them with super glue in several layer until it was a bit over the surface
of the wing. I used super glue
because some spots were going to be scribed.
When dry the super glue is hard as the plastic and then I can get smooth
and straight lines. After the super
glue was completely dried, I sanded it using 400-grit sandpaper.
First of all, I measure the slats on the drawings and then drew them on
the kit. When the layout of the flaps was ready, I scribed them using the
Squadron scribing tool and then a sharp dentist tool that has about the angle I
needed. Several passes were necessary as scribing has to be done little by
little and patience if you don’t want to run over the adjacent plastic. To
represent the flaps I had to do wider and deeper panel lines. When the flaps
were deep and wide enough, they were sanded using a Micro-Mark tadpole sanders.
This is a picture of the finished flaps. |
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on image below to see larger image |
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Step 6
| Revell kit does
not have spill doors or variable intakes so I decided to scratch built ones for
my kit.
I thought this could be eye catching. Since I had scribed the panel lines, I already knew where the spill doors would be.
I used a new sharp knife to cut the plastic in order to get a sharper
cutting surface and eliminate sanding and filling as possible.
Once the cutting was done, I bent the plastic down just the necessary to
get an opening of about 1/16. The
filling and sanding was minimum. I
then sanded the top of the opening to get a thin and sharp edge. |
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Step 7
In this step I
glued the wings, tailfins and air intakes to the rear fuselage with the correct
angle according to drawings. Since the wings and tailfins were glued with a
different angle than the kit suggests, thin gaps appeared in the joint.
To fill this gap, I applied Gunze Mr. Putty and when it was almost dry, I
applied two layers of super glue on top of the putty.
This allowed me to scribe a panel line that goes all the way on top of
the fuselage and wings joints.
When all the
pieces that complete the rear fuselage were glued, filled and sanded, all pieces
were polished using 400, 600, 1500, 3200, 4000, 6000 and 8000 grit sandpapers
until surface was shiny and smooth.
Step 8
| The cockpit.
Revell provides a very simple cockpit; it looks very bare and the basic
fittings looked incorrect; a decal for the control column is also provided,
which is not accurate either. Unfortunately,
there is not aftermarket cockpit detail sets for the Mig-25 although there are
some resin KM-1 ejection seats available. I used the tub that Revell provides, but used Academy’s Mig-21 instruments, stick and control
column that was adapted to a Mig-25 configuration. I cut the side panel of the
Academy kit and glued them on top of the Mig-25 tub. For the sidewalls, I used
Eduard Mig-21 MF photoetched detail set. I also substituted the totally
inaccurate ejection seat provided for Revell and used a KMC KM-1 ejection seat.
I also added two tiny boxes on top of the instrument panel shroud although I’m
not sure what they are in a real aircraft. |
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on image below to see larger image |
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I painted the
entire cockpit using Model Master II Russian interior green including the
instrument panel shroud. In early
Mig-25 Foxbats the instrument panel shrouds were painted the same color as the
entire cockpit. I think this color
is very green compared to pictures of Mig-25 cockpits. To get a similar color I
added some drops of Testors blue to the Interior Green until I got a green-blue
color similar to that seen in Mig-25 and Mig-21. I allowed the cockpit to dry a
full 24 hours.
With the overall
base color fully dried, I started painting the major areas of other colors. I painted the instruments faces, side consoles and sidewalls,
the top of instrument panels hoods with Gunze black. When the cockpit was fully dried, I applied a coat of Gunze
gloss clear to the entire cockpit and left it dry overnight.
After, I drybrushed the instrument faces again to highlight extra
details. Some other spots were drybrushed using light gray as the major wiring
and tubes running around the ejection seat. I then applied a semi-gloss clear to
the entire cockpit again. Some other details were painted red, gray and white.
Finally, I applied some weathering to the cockpit
using dark gray and black
pastels on the tub and ejection seat.
Although, it’s
not a 100% accurate Mig-25 cockpit, it looks OK to me.
After that, the
cockpit was attached to the front fuselage, which was very straightforward as
well. Here are some pictures of the finished cockpit.
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on images below to see larger images
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Step 9
| Air intakes were
glued to the front fuselage and the front and rear fuselages were put together
and it was in this step when I discovered a major fit problem.
The joint of the two fuselages left a step and an ugly gap. Thus, I had
to decide whether to align the top and fix the bottom or the other way around.
I decided to align the bottom part and fix the top, which had a flat
surface. This would ease scribing of the details that would be removed by
sanding. I filled up the gap using
a thin plastic strip and Mr. Putty. Then, I applied a few thin layers of super glue to reduce the
step. After that, everything went
well. Then, I sanded the super glue
to remove the step starting with 320 grit wet sandpaper and then 400. I then
scribed all the panel lines I had destroyed by the sanding. Finally the 4000,
6000 and 8000 grit sanding pads were used to remove all scratches.
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Step
10
In this step, I scratch built the
pitot tube of the radome cone. The
one provided by Revell is too short and doesn’t have all the ILS antennas that
a Mig-25 radome cone has. Moreover, in the real Mig-25, the pitot tube seems to
be a continuation of the radome cone not a separate piece.
To simulate that, I used a plastic rod and lengthened it using a small
torch and glued it to the radome cone. I then applied some Mr. Surfacer 500 to
the contact and sand it until I got a smooth surface and looked as one piece.
Then, I cut 3/4” of a needle and glued to the end of the pitot head
using white glue.
After that, I printed out
the pitot head details to scale on thick paper about the thickness of Eduard
photoetched material and cut them using a sharp blade knife. The real pitot has eight ILS antennas instead of four
provided for the kit. Again, I used
white glue for it is hard to position the antennas in the right place at first
and with white glue you always have some extra time to relocate. This is a
picture showing the finished pitot tube.
Step 11
In this step I attached the front
canopy to the fuselage. Again the
fitting was petty good. I applied
Mr. Surfacer 500 to the joint to eliminate any seams and make the front canopy
look as part of the fuselage as in a real aircraft.
Step 12
I substituted the kit
antennas in front of the canopy with .5mm pencil leads. The kit contains 3
antennas, but Mig-25s have four.
Step 13
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| When I was about to start
painting the kit, I came up with another crazy idea. I had spent much time in the kit, why not
spend some more. So I
decided to drill all the rivets for surface detail. Since the model was already
built, there were some spots where drilling was difficult, but with some
patience and some broken bits, I could drill the rivets where needed. I didn’t use a ruler but I marked all the rivet positions
with a 0.5 mm pencil before drilling. It
took me about ten hours to drill all the rivets, but this gave the kit a better
and more realistic appearance. This is a
picture of the tailfins for example.
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on image below to see larger image |
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Step 14
The painting. I usually
don’t apply primer before painting the model, but since this project involved
many sanding- scribing, sanding-scribing, I applied a layer of Floquil Railroad
Primer to highlight all possible seams or scratches on the plastic.
I was surprised that most of the kit looked very good after the
application of the primer. Few
spots had to be polished again. The flaps were sanded and polished to get a
smother surface and then given a second layer of primer.
When the primer had dried, I
realized something, the color of the primer is a really close match to the
Mig-25 color that I have seen. The kit suggests a medium gray, but I decided not to use
it. I applied then another very thin layer and that was it for the base color.
After the base color was fully
dried, I mixed the base color with some drops of black to get a slightly darker
color. I know that real Mig-25s are
painted overall medium gray, but I have seen some artistic drawings showing
different tones of gray and it seemed very nice to me. Thus, the center of the
wings, some panels of the air intakes, fuselage, and leading edges were painted
with a darker color to get an uneven color. Tail fins panels and radome cone
were painted using Model Master Gunship Gray.
I then airbrushed all the panel
lines with the same darker color very thinned.
The entire kit was then
coated with Model Master gloss clear lacquer as preparation for the decals.
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Missiles were painted with Model
Master II Semi-gloss White and tips with Dark Gull Gray. The way the missiles
are laid out is really bad. I had a
hard time filling, sanding and scribing. Each
missile consists of four parts, which isn't many, but after these pieces are
glued together, eight ugly gaps appeared on each missile. That should give you an
idea of the filling and sanding involved. A
good thing is that I scribed all the pieces before they were glued.
To attempt to scribe panel lines after the missiles are assembled would have been
a real pain in the neck.
I used a drawing from a
Spanish magazine called El Mundo de la Aviacion (The World of Aviation) as a
reference to paint the missiles. I
didn’t like the black and white colors suggested by Revell.
Here is a couple of pictures of the finished missiles.
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Step 15
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The decals.
Revell decals for the Mig-25 consist of only six Soviet red stars and two
numbers beside the instrument panels which I didn’t use.
The decals responded very well to the decal solvent. It took me about
twenty minutes to decal the kit.
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Step 16
Since I detailed the cockpit, I
left the canopy open. Before gluing the canopy, I cut two trims of plastic to
represent the ejection rails and glued them to the cockpit tub. Then I position
the ejection seat.
To represent the canopy
actuator, I used a bent pin, which was glued to the middle of the front canopy.
I also added some small
pieces of thin wire to the wingtips, wing and tailplanes to simulate static
dischargers.
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see larger images |
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Step 17
Weathering.
I don’t have much experience with weathering techniques.
However, I wanted to experiment. First, I applied a wash with watercolor
coil gray, which is almost black, all over the model little by little.
I applied the watercolor paint in one small section of the model until it
covered the section I wanted to work on until it was completely dark gray. I
left it for one minute or so until it was almost dried.
After, I removed the watercolor with slightly wet paper towel until most
of it disappeared. Thus, I got two
things at the same time. I got the
model to look old and dirty and highlighted the scribed panel lines. Some spots
got dirtier look than other, which gave the model a more realistic view.
Finally, I applied a mix of
pastels over the entire model with a thick paintbrush to simulate dust.
The last step
I glued all the remaining
components to the model: missiles, mainwheels, nosewheels, undercarriage wheel
bays, and some antennas. Some
antennas and lights were painted as final touch.
Well this project finally came to
an end
Conclusion:
This wasn’t an easy project,
but it was really fun and rewarding for me because I learned some new techniques that I can apply to future models.
I didn’t count the hours I spent, but I think they were about 200-250
hours spread over four months.
I don’t think I would build
another Mig-25, not because of the difficulty involved, but because the Revell
Mig-25P is the only option you have. Unfortunately,
to build some other versions of the Foxbat out of that model would involve even
more surgery that the one required to build this early version of the Mig-25.
However, I would build some other versions of the Mig-25, Mig-31, Su-24
Su-35, or Su-37 if Hasegawa, Tamiya or Academy had the guts to do a new 1/48
tooling of these monsters, but honestly, I don’t think this will happen in the
next few years.
Juan
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