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Here I show the MIG29 which was special colored for the occasion of the "Last flight of the NVA" (the ex East German Air Force).
It was in duty at the JAGDFLIEGERGESCHWADER 3 in the facilities at FORST PRESCHEN, East Germany, nearby the border to Poland. The date of the change to the West German BUNDESLUFTWAFFE was September 27th 1990. For this occasion this "red 604" got the special markings as German flag colors, on both sides and backwards of the cockpit and at the leading edge of the 2 tails as well.
Directly after this last flight, the Bundesluftwaffe changed the red 604 into the Western German markings. (But I can't definitely tell which number-combination it has got.) But surely some of the East German MIGs stayed in their "eastern" camouflage scheme up to the mid 90īs.
Now to the model
The kit I show here, is the (old) single seater 1/32 scale MIG29 from Revel. I think it was offered in the early 90īs until about 1995. Mostly I built this kit out of the box., except for some special details, which are always very helpful when a kit of a modern jet should become an "eyecatcher" at an exhibition (if you are not only mention the big scale).
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So I had the opportunity to get the old cockpit TAC set ( resin and photo-etched-parts). And in that case, the photos speak for themselves. So I had only to look around for some cockpit-photos of the NVA-MIGs to get the right painting. The quality of this upgrade set was very good and it's always a thankful thing to add such great details to a kit like this.
The second upgrade was the use of the Superscale decal sheet for this bird. This sheet contains all the necessary special markings you need to get this airplane in the right way.
But in my case, I didn't use the colored German banners. For my taste, it always gets better results when such things were painted. So I began masking and coloring, masking and coloring...
But that's the only way to avoid complications with the accuracy and setting of decals, and of course the enamels always let no other color shine through!
Enamels, ah the old question of which enamels I should use! Don't be disappointed: but in that case I must say that the ready-to-use airbrush colors from Revell did a great job! Some shades had to be mixed, but Revell gave good advices in the model description. Maybe there are hundreds of other formidable enamels like Testors, Gunze,...but here the Revellīs did it very well!
At last but not least, let me say that building a bird like this always needs tons of putty and hours and hours of sanding down! Also in this case. The gaps between the jet intakes, the wings and the fuselage were a horror. But that's nothing new. It's not one of these 1/48 Tamiya kits where you only have to take the open bottle of glue in the box, shake 2 minutes, and a formidable, seamless plane gets ready.
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To get the MIG29 a more realistic look, I cut away all the flaps and get them on again several angles. The rest of the model was built out of the box.
So, I hope you have enjoyed my small story of building a big-Mig-bird.
Editor Note: Ralf live in Cologne, Germany with his family. He is an active member of the 1st PMC.
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