AREA 88: "Call in Hawkeye!"

I love this ARII boxes. So exciting to see what's inside! 

Oh, my... I guess that's what you get when you buy a cheap "partially started" kit off eBay. This will take some heavy duty cleaning... 

Not perfect. But I found white plastic underneath all that mystery gunk. We can work with this. 

This Tsukuda Hobby kit seems to be the "goldylocks" kit for this project. It's better than the 1/144 Airfix MiG-21s (which I only really use as cannon fodder to be blown up), but not good enough for a staring role like the Eduard ones.  

As you can see from the sprues, there's enough detail for a MiG-21 to be in a strong supporting role in this project. It's good, but not so great that it'll outshine the RA-5C Vigilante. 

I hate empty cavernous air intakes, so let's add a bit of plastic card and frame out the space a bit. 

Yeah. That's better. Also plenty of room inside the fuselage for the engine lights and still enough to add some explosion bits later. 

The inside of the MiG-21 is a bit tight, but I don't need all that much for this one. 

All buttoned up... now for some putty. The the area where the cockpit connects to the rear fuselage on the RA-5C is a bit thin, so I added some plastic card to bring the joint up to the same level. 

Time to add a pilot. It's a bit of a tight squeeze, especially with the seat going in as well. 

I finally broke down and bought paint other than Tamiya. Vallejo has a very good "MiG turquoise" so who am I to argue? 

Canopy's fit... barely. They worked during the dry fit, but after glueing them in place they've rubbed some of the paint off the pilot helmets on the inside. Oh, well, nothing I can really do about it without a LOT of extra work. 

First coats of paint... and some masking for the second one on the RA-5C. 

Yeah. I thought about freestyling the camouflage... I'm glad I didn't. One small masking error on the nose though, but we can fix that. 

No masking issues on the MiG-21. Looking good... albeit a little too "clean". 

Yeah. A panel wash and now we're looking a little more "lived in", right? 

Some painted cotton to start trying to figure out how the explosion is going to look. We can hide a few LED lights in there I think. 

One red LED on top... two on the bottom... that should be enough, right? 

YEAH Baby! BOOM!