Italeri's 1/72 scale
MiG-29 A Fulcrum

by Jose Lucero

MiG-29 A Fulcrum

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Italeri's 1/72 MiG-29A is said to be the best kit of this famous Russian fighter in this scale. I've compared it with the Fujimi and AMT offering, and for me it captures de nice shape of the MiG-29 better, I've not compared it against scale drawings, though. The kit comprises of several sprues of the typical gray styrene used by Italeri with very nicely recessed details. The wheel wells have some molded on details and the landing gear is very well done. The cockpit is very spartan and the ejection seat is not but a crude representation of the K-36DM ejection seat.

As usual, construction started with the cockpit, which is one of the weakest points of this kit. I decided to add details from Eduard's MiG-29 Photo Etch set. This set improved the instrument panel, side consoles and the gun sight HUD display. I also used the very good True Details 1/72 K-36 ejection seat. The sidewalls where completely devoid of any detail, so scratch built some detail to cover it up.

The kit's construction is very tricky in some parts. One has to be very careful when joining the two fuselage halves together so that the correct shape of the nose is achieved. Documentation comes in very handy here. Another parts that are difficult to join are the wings and I had to use some putty and couple of coats of Mr. Surfacer. The join where the air intakes meet is awful and I filled this one with CA glue to prevent it from showing as normal putty does with time.

I painted my MiG-29 A freehand with my Badger 155 airbrush using Testor's Model Master enamels Fulcrum Gray FS:36495 and Fulcrum Gray Green FS:26329 in the Russian tactical scheme. Weathering was done by applying different tones of the base colors to accentuate panels, an acrylic paint wash and pastel chalk.

The decals came from Eagle Strike's excellent Ivan's Eagles set. Fulcrums from 120 and 121 IAP are covered including MiG-29 As and the two-seater trainer MiG-29 UB. All are in the Russian Tactical Scheme and some feature shark mouths. These squadrons are said to be play the Aggressor role in the VVS. I decided to use the only one that didn't have a shark mouth, but featured a red lighting bolt under the cockpit and the air intakes, the Russian flag waving with a red star and the VVS' Flag with out the soviet symbols it used to have.

Another thing to note here is the lack of red stars on the upper surfaces of the wings. To me this scheme represents the transition between the old VVS of the Soviet Union and the New VVS of the new Russian Federation.

You can see some pictures of the aircraft of 120 and 121 IAP here:

http://www.az.ru/andyk/shark/shark.htm

http://www.samolet.co.uk/mig-29agg.html

If you would like to read this article in Spanish please visit:

http://www.ipmsguatemala.org/Galerias/mayo03/individual/lucero_mig29a.htm

Click the thumbnails below to view larger images:

Model, Images and Text Copyright © 2004 by Jose Lucero
Page Created 09 September, 2004
Last Updated 10 September, 2004

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