Railway Workshops (Newport)

 

Tamiya 1/48 Mig-15 bis

 

Some 15-20 years ago, a member of my local modelling club gifted his entire book and model collection to the club, which then held a special sale to dispose of it all, with the proceeds from this being retained by the club.

However, at the end of the day a few unsold items still remained and one of these was a Tamiya boxing of the Mig-15, which I was handed for helping out and gratefully accepted. However, it wasn't until I got home that I discovered the box contained not one, but three partially constructed Mig-15's as well as a multitude of resin and etch parts. Not knowing what to do with all at the time, I then just decided to put it in my stash and promptly forgot about it.

Some years later a friend of mine gave me a copy of the Midlands Publishing book on the Mig-15, which contained a photo of a North Korean Mig that had suffered combat damage during an attack on B-29's and was then parked up on the airfield with its wings and tailplane removed. This suddenly reminded me of the box siting in my stash and I decided it would be a good project to undertake rather than just building a whole bunch of standard Mig-15's.

My first task was to choose the best resin cockpit and ejection seat and to these I added a Quinta Studios 3D cockpit placard and seatbelt set (QD48160). With the interior finished and fuselage assembled I then had to rebuild the wing root areas - adding panels, spars and hydraulic lines - the upper fin area and also create the combat damage. I then had to take measurements and create a drawing of the fuselage dolly, which I used as a cutting and assembly guide. The dolly's were made from styrene rod and strip and proved to be surprisingly strong, with the wheels being a set of resin ones that I also found in the kit.

With assembly complete and the model masked, it was then primed with Gunze Mr Finishing Surfacer 1500 Black, which is an excellent base for a silver finish. The model was then sprayed with Tamiya Silver Leaf (TS-30), the speed brakes with AK Extreme Metal Dark Aluminium (AK 480) and the nose with Gunze Mr.Color Red FS11136 (327). Once dry the model was then sprayed with a coat of Gunze Mr.Hobby Mr.Super Clear UV Cut Gloss.

Unfortunately, other than the Korean roundels I didn't have the correct nose codes, but a Google search revealed that the Bronco Mig-15 had these on their decal sheet. So I put out a request on a number of Facebook pages and was duly rewarded for my efforts thanks to a fellow modeller, who came threw with the goods. The decals were then applied, the panel lines given a light grey wash and some minor weathering added to highlight a few panels. With that done the model was then sprayed with an overall coat of Gunze Mr.Hobby Mr.Super Clear Semi-Gloss.

This proved to be both a challenging and fun project and a unique way to present a model of the well known Mig-15 in a different light.