1/72 Hasegawa MiG-29

"Ukrainian Falcons"

by Keith Beraska

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  Ukraine National Day 2005 

 

This is the Hasegawa 1/72nd scale MiG-29 Fulcrum "Ukrainian Falcons" (kit #04093).  The kit is the early MiG-29 release by Hasegawa, with a large decal sheet for the early Ukrainian Falcons scheme depicted in the photo on the boxtop.  Two sprues are included with the kit (the weapons sprue being absent), as shown in the photo below.  Although the Ukrainian Falcons used the MiG-29 C (9-13) version of the Fulcrum (not the MiG-29 A (9-12)), I decided to build this kit OOB as the Hasegawa MiG is molded underscale, and the decals would be difficult to fit onto another manufacturers mold.

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Typical to Hasegawa kits, the cockpit is rather spartan, and includes a pilot figure, which I tried to paint to match reference photos I had of the Ukrainian Falcons pilots.  The vertical stabilizers fit to the body was poor, and required lots of putty and sanding to match properly.  After the fuselage assembly was complete I primed the model with Tamiya surface primer.

I began painting by airbrushing a light gray Tamiya acrylic for the wheel wells, then when dry, I masked them with blue tac.  For the white I used Tamiya acrylic gloss white - for the blue I used a Gunze acrylic blend of colours.  The instructions call for a 50/50 blend of cobalt blue and sky blue, however the colour didn't seem correct to me so I added more sky blue to match the colours in my references.

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The kit comes with a beautiful set of decals, which are however, thick and somewhat brittle.  The larger decals were cut into smaller sections and settled down with Micro Set and Micro Sol.  After the decals had set, I sprayed a coat of Future to seal them, then airbrushed a coat of Pollyscale satin finish.  I really like the bright, colourful look of the finished product!  I had the opportunity to see the Ukrainian Falcons perform in Ukraine a number of years ago, however, sadly, it seems that the Ukrainian Falcons demonstration team has now been disbanded.

Keith

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Photos and text © by Keith Beraska