F-86 Sabre, Indian Air Force **FIISHED** pics pg. 5

[zenrat]

  from me also.

[comrade harps]

Looking good.

[PR19_Kit]

Pretty darn good Brad, specially considering what you started with.

And I reckon you got that radar pretty well spot on too. 

[TheChronicOne]

Thanks, y'all!   Slowly getting back into the swing of things. It's amazing how getting out of the sun a little bit helps to bring energy and motivation back.

Transfers are next... then some detail painting... then the stripe camo. THAT should be interesting.

[comrade harps]

... then the stripe camo. THAT should be interesting.

[Weaver]

It looks like the Indian Air Force museum added a recreation of C992 to their collection earlier this year, however it's NOT the original, just a re-paint of another airframe. Their interpretation is dark stripes over NMF, the stripes looking very dark green in some lights and black in others. You'd imagine that they have more opportunities to talk to the people who actually flew and maintained them than anyone else. Having said that, I have no idea what their actual process was: museum folk can have attitudes ranging anywhere from meticulous historians to crowd-pleasing showmen, so...





It is worth pointing out that C992 wasn't the only stripey Fishbed in the '71 war. Quite a lot of Indian MiG-21s had roughly applied cammo in a variety of patterns, some of which definitely were over an NMF base. Allegedly the 'stripes' were done by following the shadow patterns thrown onto the aircraft by the camouflage nets over their parking spots, which accounts for the variations in both size and pattern.

For reference, here's that Britmodeller thread again: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981982-mig-21-question-indian-air-force/

[zenrat]

Almost looks like Brunswick Green.
It's well cared for.  Very shiny.  As is the Hunter behind it.

[TheChronicOne]

Nice, Mister H. How convenient?  I'm more motivated than ever, now, to get on with the show. Last night I finished off all the little fiddly parts... got them all clipped out and sanded and ready to be applied. Whole thing, now, is waiting on the transfers to go on which I will attempt today and if I'm still feeling motivated I'll turn right around and start doing the stripes.   If an amazing amount of motivation and gusto hits, I might finish it off but I kind of doubt that. The weather isn't cooperating much any more. It's kind of cloudy but the humidity is back BIG TIME so mowing these lawns today might sap all my energy, we'll see.   Either way... going to get the markings on. I'll stop at that point and snap a couple photos.

Also.... always learning... on this one and the last one I did (The Pluto, I guess) I've solved the problem of too thick paint/clear making un masking canopies a big pain in me arse... I found a method...... after gettting the first coat of actual color on the canopy, mask it again, that way subsequent coats of paint and clear don't build up on it sealing the masking tape into the finish. Works like a charm!!!!! 

[Weaver]

There's another point that's been made in various discussions, which might explain the varying interpretations of the base colour. It doesn't seem to be backed up by any specific evidence, but it seems credible to me, for a couple of reasons.

Some of the Indian MiGs might, at some point before the war, have received a coat of clear lacquer over their NMF finish. Two things may have subsequently happened to this lacquer in service:

1. It acquired a faint yellow or green tone, either because it was contaminated from the start, or due to exposure to UV,

2. It became 'sandblasted' in use by high-speed flight in dusty air. This made it 'milky', reducing it's transparency and causing the aircraft to look, from a distance, as though they were a grubby, pale metallic grey, rather than shiny polished metal.

One or both of these factors may explain why the base colour doesn't look like NMF in the black and white photos. The NMF surface couldn't be simply repolished without first stripping the lacquer, and once the war had started that wasn't going to happen until well after the end of combat operations.

This is credible to me for two reasons:

1. I've spent decades messing about with old motorbikes, and this is exactly how clear lacquered polished aluminium behaves. In addition to getting sandblasted, impacts that penetrate the lacquer also cause tiny, white 'spiderwebs' to form, where moisture gets under the lacquer and then corrodes the aluminium in pattern that reflect it's spread.

2. Exactly the same lacquer-over-NMF issue has been discussed as a reason for the varying interpretations of the colour of Bf-109s in the Spanish Civil War. Almost no colour photos of these exist, and colour profiles have rendered their colour as everything from NMF to pale grey to pale sand. In this case the use of a lacquer that's capable of producing these effects is documented IIRC, although whether it did or it didn't in service is anecdotal.

Whether in 1930's Spain or 1970's India, people fighting wars generally have better things to do with their time than making notes for model-makers. The flip side of this for model makers, and especially What iffers, is, of course, that nobody can tell you that you're definitively wrong...

[TheChronicOne]

Brilliant.... that explains why some were thinking they may have actually been painted grey...    This is good news for me because by time I get the last coat of clear on this (last one will be matte) it should serve to replicate this pretty well. I might try to throw a little weathering on it, as well.... we'll see.

[Weaver]

It doesn't help that Indian MiG-21s actually HAVE been painted grey for the last 20 years, so anyone doing a cursory Google image search can say "oh yeah, they have grey ones", not noticing, or understanding, the differences between a -PF a -bis and a Bison...

[Dizzyfugu]

It looks like the Indian Air Force museum added a recreation of C992 to their collection earlier this year, however it's NOT the original, just a re-paint of another airframe. Their interpretation is dark stripes over NMF, the stripes looking very dark green in some lights and black in others. You'd imagine that they have more opportunities to talk to the people who actually flew and maintained them than anyone else. Having said that, I have no idea what their actual process was: museum folk can have attitudes ranging anywhere from meticulous historians to crowd-pleasing showmen, so...





It is worth pointing out that C992 wasn't the only stripey Fishbed in the '71 war. Quite a lot of Indian MiG-21s had roughly applied cammo in a variety of patterns, some of which definitely were over an NMF base. Allegedly the 'stripes' were done by following the shadow patterns thrown onto the aircraft by the camouflage nets over their parking spots, which accounts for the variations in both size and pattern.

For reference, here's that Britmodeller thread again: https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/234981982-mig-21-question-indian-air-force/

Oh nice, thanks a lot for posting these pics, I was not aware of this "remake". AFAIK, the original C992 crashed around 2000 and was lost.

[TheChronicOne]

So, now we have a sort of "stock" Indian Sabre.



This paint, though, I swear....  I was considering burning it off on models but now I'm going to discontinue it and use it to paint ..... outside... metal stuff or whatever. It's simply not meant to represent scale finishes. I still have some tricks up my sleeve to make it better, however, and I will be employing those soon..... 



The transfers are now on, though, so I can get on with painting the rest... it'll be a sort of ongoing "flow" and I'll paint the camo stripes, detail paint, and some of the weathering on all at the same time. I'm going achieve a somewhat representative paint job that depicts the fact that some things were painted long after (or even short after, but definitely after others).   



One week build...  (pfft.... now over two months I think?) 

[TheChronicOne]

Got the camo on with attention to the variations. 











Detail painting is next.

[Old Wombat]