Just to let you guys know, I'm building this as a MiG-23MF, which is slightly different than the kitted MiG-23M. Most obviously, the MF canopy has a frame on the top that the M lacks. Me, not knowing much about jets, didn't realize that Trumpeter offered an MF kit but I think I was scared off by the box art and didn't even consider it...
When I left off the kit, the fuselage halves had been glued together and I was in the process of filling and sanding the seams, most notably between the intakes and the fuselage. So picking up from there, I attached the tall vertical tail fin. There is a bit of a gap between the base of the fin and the fuselage. For these types of gaps, I like to use White Milliput worked into the gap using a toothpick and then using a brush wet with water and a damp paper towel to remove the excess.
The nose cone is glued into place and seam is addressed with some Mr Surfacer 1000.
The canopy is masked using Eduard masks. The front windscreen is glued into place using Testors Glue but the canopy is left unglued as I am planning on having the canopy hinged open.
The horizontal tail surfaces are glued into place.
I've noticed that the folding ventral fin is short shot on the tip of one side so I use Milliput to fill that in.
There are lots of small bits and pieces, plastic and PE, that attach to the front of the fuselage and I'm unsure as to when those things should get glued into place. If I do it now, I'm afraid they'll get snapped off but if I do it later, I may mar the finish. I've chosen the latter. So the nose cone gets some preshading. I also do this on the central drop tank just to test out the camo colors. You can see the panel line around the nose cone that I rescribed after sanding.
I've been applying grey primer to certain areas to check the surface and doing spot repairs all along the fuselage. The joint between the vertical fin and the fuselage needs one more bead of Milliput.
The drop tank has been sprayed with camo colors. I'm not sure about the colors and I'll have to check my references to see if they are a good enough match. The rest of the ordinance has been glued together.
I am doing a camoflaged Polish fighter, so these are the colors I'm looking to replicate...
The missles are pre-shaded.
The bottom pre-shading is started. I will be using dark scribbling to produce some tonal variation, similar to what I did to the nose cone and drop tank.