1/48 Anigrand MiG-31 Firefox

Gallery Article by Stéphane Petitjean on Apr 3 2019

 

      

This is my ANIGRAND 1/48 Firefox. I have just finished it a couple of weeks ago.

This is my first Resin kit and I must admit I really enjoyed building it even if it required quite a lot of work to make the parts fit together, but I guess the good thing about sci-fi models is you can let your imagination rule the game, it's really cool...

This project turned out to be a bit expensive though as I ended up buying two kits (!)The reason being that in the first kit I bought the parts were not to the correct shape: the upper half of the fuselage main section was bent upwards quite significantly so I had to glue a 20 cm steel ruler inside it to bend it back to the correct shape. The wings were so twisted that I eventually gave up trying to recover their correct shape and went for a second kit.  Luckily the second kit I received was almost perfect and I could carry on the construction using the parts from it.

I used spindles and hypodermic needles for pitot tubes and the under fuselage cannons. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the contributors from the "Tools'n'Tips" section as there are plenty of very helpful pieces of advice in there!

For the paints I used Humbrol Enamel paints.  The base color is a mixture of dark grey leftovers, "navy" blue, and quite a lot of flat black (I just tried different mixes of the above colors until I got the color I wanted but I can't quite remember the percentages).  I then derived a number of slightly different colors by adding a bit more flat black or dark grey to the above base color to paint some of the panels in an attempt to break the monotony of the kit.

I sealed the model with a coat of gloss cote before applying the decals. I was not very excited by the decals provided in the kit as they just seem a bit too flashy and don't quite reflect the dimensions of a normal Russian red star, so I used decals from an Academy 1/48 Su-27 that are to the correct shape and with a deeper red.

For the weathering I made my first attempt to use the air brush, applying very thin patches of diluted flat white inside the panels. (I find that the final results looks OK although I probably made it too contrasted, that's the lesson learnt for my next project :-)).

I finally sealed the whole model with a couple of coats of satin cote.

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The display base is just a cutout from a 44mm thick wooden kitchen top. I put a Russian star display base on it from Coastal Kits (Home - Coastal Kits).

I just wanted to mention this Firefox is the first kit I did since the Raptor I did more than 13 years ago (time flies!). Here is the link if you are interested: http://www.arcair.com/Gal6/5101-5200/gal5129-F-22-Petitjean/00.shtm.

I hope you enjoy the pictures, thank you very much for watching.

Stéphane Petitjean

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Photos and text © by Stéphane Petitjean