The Aces - The 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War

Xu Ho Autore
Note for Mig-17:
The most challenging part of this build was the camouflage painting. To replicate the correct pattern, I went through a lot of reference photos. Unfortunately, historical images of the actual 3020 aircraft are extremely scarce, and the museum displays are mostly replicas, which made things even more difficult. In the end, I decided to base the design on the few available photos (which only show one side) and add my own interpretation to complete the rest.

For the painting technique, I used light misting to create soft, feathered edges, and carefully built up paint in certain areas to replicate the sharp edges seen in the original photo. Before starting the camouflage, I applied MIG's chipping fluid as a base, since I planned to use the hairspray chipping method later.

At one point, I considered tracing the camouflage pattern from the photo onto masking paper for a more accurate spray job. However, that method would only produce hard-edged camouflage, which couldn't capture the variation I wanted, so I ultimately abandoned that approach.

Mark K
Beautifully done. Thanks for explaining your technique - great result!

Rui
Ok. I'm in. Let's see the rest!

Geert
Great idea!

Clement
Great work on the kit and photography, this looks beautiful!

Agustin Prellezo
Very well done!

Guy Rump
Great set of well executed models, congrats! 👍

Xu Ho Autore
Thank you, everyone! I'm currently working on the two Phantoms. It's interesting to work on the same aircraft from different brands. I'll show you later.

Rui S
Great work 👍

Arif Saeed
Very nice work 👌

Makariel
Beautiful work! Your MIG-17 camo is very impressive, I have this on my to-do list and it is not easy to get my head around how to achieve this type of pattern.

Xu Ho Autore
Note for Mig-21:
The first problem I faced was deciding how to deal with the decals after checking the history of MiG-21 No. 5121. The real aircraft in the museum is well preserved, but it's hard to tell which markings were really there during the war and which were added or removed later. In the end, I chose to use all the decals from the instruction sheet.
The next question was: which version should I build?
If I want to show the jet on the day it shot down the B-52, then it shouldn't have any kill marks yet.
If I want to copy how it looked during outdoor display years ago, I should add 8 kill marks.
If I want to match how it looks now in the museum, then only 5 kill marks should be used.
Finally, I chose to build the version from the day it shot down the B-52, with the right weapons load. But I still added 8 kill marks on the nose to honor this great aircraft.
The last issue was the silver paint. When I put decals on top, the finish looked uneven and shiny. To fix this, I lightly sprayed some silver paint over the decals to make everything look smoother.
Next time, for large decals on silver surfaces, I might use masking and paint the markings instead of using decals, to get a better result.

PS：The incorrect title in the image has been corrected.

Xu Ho Autore
Hi Makariel, Thanks for your kind words! I made a custom three-view camo reference to help with the painting. The right side of the fuselage is based on historical photos, but since there weren't clear views of the other angles, I had to follow the camo shapes and proportions of the colors based on the photo, and fill in the rest myself. I scaled the image to match the model's size and printed it out to guide my painting.