In 1995 I was able to secure a visa to travel through Russia, I was keen to document the declining Soviet monuments and hidden cities long out of reach of the West.
As part of this I managed to travel to the 'lost' city of Kitezh. Located far East of Moscow, near Nizhny Novgorod, the city had become the site of a Soviet Air Force testing base in WW2, far out of reach of prying German eyes. During the Cold War it expanded to become a major development centre for aircraft and soon the space exploration program too. Unsurprisingly the city was off limits for Western visitors and disappeared from maps.
Travelling with my guide I was able to make my way to the city without any major problem. With the demise of the Soviet Air Force, the Developmental Airbase nearby had declined into disuse and there was no need for secrecy any more.
This photo is of one of the buildings of the Institute for Cosmology and Aeronautics in the centre of the city. Topped with giant and rather optimistic statues of cosmonauts waving flags on the Moon with a MiG jet stuffed and mounted outside too. It was certainly looking in a poor state of repair but did seem to be still in some use...
I've always fancied making a plinthed aircraft vignette - lots of weathering potential and particularly after the astonishingly good Yak-23 scene https://www.kampfgruppe144.com/phpBB3/v ... f=3&t=7258 I wanted to give it a shot.
The building is scratchbuilt from styrene sheet, the topping is the classic Airfix 1/76 astronauts. The plane is of course the Eduard Mig-15, with Oilbrushers and Weathering pencils liberally uses.
