Madagascar's MiG

My username here is Black_sheep and this is my first airplane since ages as I usually build that dirty loud tracked things on the ground. But almost getting mad gluing together all these roadwheels and trackpins through the years and always fascinated about these early MiGs I finally decided to build one for some new colors in my modeller's life. It is one of just four jets of the Malagasy Air Force in the early nineties at Ivato Airport at Antananarivo, the Capital city of Madagascar. The kit is from Hobby Boss with some extras from Quickweel (wheel bays, air intake, pitot tubes, ejection seat, gun barrels, corrected ventral fin) and an Eduard etched set for it. Decals are from El Presidente Decal set “ferocious farmers” and the pilot figure is from Plusmodel. The aircraft is sitting on a selfmade base made out of Uschi van der Rosten´s “old concrete Runway” profi set which is very nice.

Madagascar´s Migs are the first and only export from North Korean stocks and the faded remains of the removed Korean stars are still visible a little bit on the wings and aircraft itself. According to El Presidente decals these stars were printed in a translucent colour but mine were not so I needed to over-paint them carefully with aluminium colour. The whole aircraft was finished to show an already “aged” aircraft as seen at the few pictures of this specific aircraft at the internet. I painted some fields of the wings and aircraft body with different coloured aluminium shades to achieve that worn look. As I was finished I discovered that there is a “Riveter tool” also available for the modellers– oh boy If I knew more early I could make this one more pretty…

Nevertheless I´m still very satisfied with my first try and, if the audience have good comments about my work, I feel the desire to maybe start another airplane soon.