Known as the guy who brought us “Warbird Alley”, our good buddy and all-around nice guy, P.J. Ash from Search, Arkansas, has a new project for Top Gun this year in the form of an awesome looking Soviet MiG 15 jet. P.J. will be competing in the Pro/Am Jet class.
Taking three months to build, the model is from the CARF-Models composite kit, the MiG 15 will be guided by a Spektrum DX18 transmitter with all Spektrum equipment onboard, and will be powered with a Kingtech K-100 turbine engine. The scale retracts are upgraded Down and Locked units with full gear door operation and the cockpit is fully detailed with parts from iflytallies.com. The pilot is from Warbirdpilots.com.
P.J. went the added step and added an amazingly realistic highly weathered finish using Tamiya paints. J.J. applied the paint over a silver finish and then used tape to lift the paint off in spots to show the under-color making the MiG 15 look weather worn and heavily used. Scale Nomenclature markings are from Tailormade.com.
P.J. used five documantation books and lots of internet pictures to come up with a semi-scale cockpit. Due to the way the hatch is designed, the whole cockpit sits in the fuse. and the hatch goes over everything.
The plane is all composite with hatches, panel lines, and rivets. However, he added more of everything because his documentation showed much more. The plane is molded in silver which eliminated the need to paint a base coat of silver on. When theTamiya paint had dried, he used 0000 steel wool to burnish down the paint. He then applied a very thin layer of acrylic paint thinned to about 70% thinner and 30% paint to apply a “wash” over the airplane. This made that really used and abused look.
