There's some wisdom in what you say, Simon.

Let's get on with it.
I generally much like the products of HGW. Their seat belts are superb and their decals that they call water transfer decals to me are the coolest thing in modelling since years. I'll report about that later in this blog.
Unfortunately HGW take vinyl for their paint masks and that's nothing but unsuited material, for it starts to shrink the moment it leaves the punching machine. Two out of three products made of it end up in the customer's waste bin, according to personal studies.
Why I bought them? I thought that HGW had a solution for shrinking vinyl just as they had one for silvering decals.

I ended up in backing up the HGW masks with eduard's familiar kabuki product.
It comes broken down in one mask for every corner of the window. You have to be patient to align them without offsets but that's okay, for it ensures a good fit in the corners. Hopefully.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Hey George. I heard about this method and it actually attracts me. However, I'm scared about the blade leaving scratches on the plastic. Has that never happened to you?

Thanks, George.

That means you're covering the glass of the canopy with a piece of foil bigger than actually required. Then you cut away the parts covering the frame with a fresh blade but softly enough to not let the blade scratch the plastic and, as I assume, with the frame as a bit of a guidance for the blade. I imagine that you don't cut right through the foil but rather scribe it to make it pull off at the right position?

Is that it? If yes, I'll give it a try with the additional closed canopy part of the MIG.

You need to be careful removing the foil from the canopy after painting. I use a toothpick with a flattened end to scoop the foil away.

There is a rather big amount of photographic material of the Mig-31 on the web and though I spent some time over it, the aircraft's actual tone of grey has not become entirely clear to me. Mr. Paint's colour suggestion named Traffic Grey is certainly a good match for some reference material, but other pictures show more bluish tones. I have personally never seen a Mig-31 in realty, so I eventually selected the over all look of the photos I liked most.

The concept goes like this:

• bring on a base coat of Traffic Grey panel by panel with the air brush set to a small spray cone resulting in some slight unevenness.
• post shade the panel lines with a Traffic Grey darkened by some drops of Basalt Grey.
• a filter of highly thinned Traffic Grey with some drops of Kobalt Blue blends it all together.
• panel centres are lightened again with the original tone, specific panels more than others.

4 attached images. Click to enlarge.

Thank you, Richard. Much appreciated.

I know the problem of varnish coats darkening the original painting. In fact, I'm looking for a way to deal with this since quite a while, but my endeavor has not yet brought me to where I want to be. Here's what I can tell:

• My favorite gloss and semi gloss varnishes are Gunze Mr. Paint (note: this is their lacquer product line). They give a rugged surface and are resilient against white spirit based washes and other chemicals such as decal solutions. I use the gloss varnish as a base for decals and semi-gloss as a base for weathering. I tried their flat product too, but I do advise against using it as it eats up much of the color effects and gives a dull, totally uniform appearance. I reported about this in the article about my recent Corsair: http://imodeler.com/2016/04/tamiya-f4u-1-corsair-132/
• I used Gunze's acrylic Flat Clear as a final coat in most of my recent projects. I believe it can help you solving the problem of darkening as it compensates for the effect caused by intermediate gloss coats. The price you pay: it leaves the surface completely flat, no trace of a shine left. But at least the colors remain vivid.
• George reports about a new approach he took with his Su-33. Please see our conversation in the comment area of his article: http://imodeler.com/2016/09/148-kinetic-su-33/
  I used MRP paints for the Mig too, and I got the same impression: the surface they create looks ready for decaling without additional gloss coat. However, I'm intending to do some extensive oil weathering at the Mig and therefore I opted for the usual gloss coat with Gunze Lacquer this time.
• Friends told me about Alclad's Matte Kote recently. I think I might give it a try as a final coat for the Mig project.

Looking really amazing, Halvar. I am also a convert to MRP paints. Unfortunately, most dealers here in the U.S. have them on backorder. I'm building a pretty boring Academy F-4J and would like to use MRPs on it, but I can't get the light gull gray I need.

I might have a look at trying that brand of gloss, see if it makes a difference. I've been using Vallejo varnishes so far.
I'm finding also that the Tamiya flat acrylics are very rough to the touch. I gave my last build a very light rubbing with micro mesh before applying the gloss, and that seemed to help smooth things over a bit first.
Thanks very much for the advice, much appreciated!