Re: Steyr Bolzen (East Austrian MiG-15) UPDATED 7.10.2011

[upnorth]

Hello all:

I wasn't going to post any WIP pics of this, but as I'm going on a couple of weeks holiday on Friday, I figure I'll give all of you who followed my divided Austria alternate history a taste of what I have in mind for the beast in scale form.

As you can see, the bulk of construction is finished and I'm in painting stages:

A couple of the nose show late service mods including a modernised ejection seat and removal of one cannon:


They also show a couple of features that always set the Steyr version apart from other MiG-15s, such as the replacement of the mast and line antenna near the cocpit with a pair of blade antennae on the underside, deleted nose cannons and the fairing for the IR targeting system just ahead of the cockpit.

The remaining pictures give you a feel for the splinter camoflage (which will recieve some fine tuning) that many of these aircraft carried later in their service lives in training and utility roles:






The aircraft will depict an aircraft from the strike training establishment, which operated from Obergrafendorf, in an early 70s timeframe. The last Bolzen were retired in the mid/late 70s.

The shield under the cockpit is a partially finished rendition of the Obergrafendorf city shield.

The wing bands denote a trainer/utility aircraft. I had intended to use the white as an undercoat for yellow, but the white bands are actually growing on me a bit, so I might leave them white in the end.

The kit is from Hobbyboss, I have decals to hand to make the East Austrian national insignia I cooked up in the alternate history. All I have to do now is find some tactical numbers that look the part to put on the rear fuselage.

Any and all comments welcome.

[Taiidantomcat]

Really like that paint scheme 

[Geoff]

Like it!

[upnorth]

Thanks guys, nice to see some interest in it.

I took inspiration for the camo from the current Czech AF scheme, but made it splinter to work in with Austrias alpine landscape.

[ChernayaAkula]

Nice one!  Love the paint scheme!

[upnorth]

Thanks! 

[upnorth]

I've finally had a bit more time to play with the Bolzen, including touching up the paint a bit, getting the decals on and the canopy put on.

Here's some pics:

The stars, walkways and stenciling were taken from the Hungarian section of Airfix's MiG-15 decal sheet, the centre dots were taken from the decals sheet in Revell's recent Vampire kit and the tactical numbers trimmed from the USN side of Revell's T-2 Buckeye sheet.

In the first pic, you can see the shield of Obergrafendorf completed. I need to clean up the edges of it a bit.


IN the next two, you can see some of the cannon and blast shield area:



And a couple of under side shots



Hopefully it won't be long before I can put down a sealing coat and start some weathering to blend stuff togehter.

As always, comments and insights are welcomed.