Academy 1/48 MiG-21FL
by [b]G. Galvan and P. François, Eagle Press.[/b]
Despite being one of the aircraft most produced of the post-war era, modeling the MiG-21 in 1/48 scale has always been uncommon. In fact, for years only the Oez kit for the MiG-21MF and Bis has been available, while the MiG-21UM has only appeared in an expensive and limited edition HiPM kit. The MiG-21PF kit by Revell, has been widely available, but this represents only one version of this widely produced fighter. After as many false announcements, Academy finally produced a pair of kits, dedicated to the "standard" MF version, and another, even more interesting, dedicated to the PF version "Fishbed D," used for our project.
We were interested in this version because it was the first really "all weather" MiG-21, and also among the first very widely exported models, As a consequence this variant was a participant in many important wars, like "Six Days" war in Middle East, the Vietnam (PFV version built specially for the North Vietnamese) and that among India and Pakistan of the 1971. The MiG-21FL was built under license in India and was strictly a derivative from the PF, something which allowed us to build an Indian aircraft without special modifications to the original kit.
From the modeling point of view, the Academy kit is a definite improvement over the Oez kit, specially with respect to detailing. However as with many kits of this Korean firm not all the inaccuracies have been resolved. The box contains about 130 pieces, the plastic is light Grey and of fairly good quality, the finish is notable, with all the engraved paneling very fine. The dimensions are a little excessive, but maybe it depends on the length of the probe, the wing span is more or less accurate, while the forms are really accurate. The complex but promising engineering of the fuselage, especially the front part, is done in a way which allows it to be modified for making other versions in future. Optional pieces allow us to make an aircraft of the first series, with small fin MiG-21F style, or of the last, with the definitive big fin.
The cockpit and the instrument panel have many raised details, but we think it to be less than accurate and too flat. The detailing on the SK-1 seat, however, is excellent. The big trouble is in the upper lip of the instrument panel and in all the zone under the windscreen, as the outline of the upper part of the instrument panel must be altered producing two rounded indentations at the sides, reconstructed from us in acetate, then partially painted in semi-gloss Black, the "inside windscreen" which wraps around the instrument panel and act as a the lip and which has two lateral semi-ogival windows. Completely absent also is the gunsight/gun camera fixed to the oval glass. This has been furnished from the kit, and fixed by us to the "inside windscreen". Also the gunsight has been reconstructed with plasticard, wires and acetate. Unfortunately, in spite of our large documentation, it has been difficult to understand the conformation of this zone, painted among the other in Matt Black, of which many parts still remain obscure. Given the vintage of the PF, not much by way of documentation is available on the type. Most of the documentation now available pertains to the later versions of the MiG-21 which replaced the PF and its derivatives in virtually all air forces.
The unexpectedly easy alignment of the front fuselage, of the spinal buckle and of the fin with the fuselage was welcome. The color of the interiors of the cockpit is the famous light Blue-Green characteristic of the Soviet cockpits; this color is present only in the Indian MiG-21FLs, while most of the Russians and Warsaw Pact PF interiors are in semi-gloss Black or in Light Grey; since such a color was not commercially available, we made it using 80% of German Light Blue 65 (Gunze Sangyo H67), 10% of Zinc Chromate Primer (Gunze Sangyo H58) and 10% of Night Blue (Gunze Sangyo H326). The control bar is in semi-gloss Black while the seat is in Light Grey 35622 (Gunze Sangyo H417) with the cushion and the belts in Sand, the handles in Red.
Inside the fuselage we mounted the compressor blades furnished from the kit and the afterburner injectors, and painted them in Matt Black lightened with Silver; they do offer a good effect if you look inside the exhaust. After have glued some lead to the interior of the front as ballast we could proceed with the assembly of the two half fuselages, the wings, the fin and the horizontal rudders, operations that don't present distinctive problems, requiring measured custom of putty and sanding paper. Any attention must be dedicated to the alignment of wings, split in two separate pieces, and which must be mounted with a light negative dihedral.
We ignored the possibility of fixing extended flaps, because these are not present in the kit and because was not practice of the pilots of the Fishbed leave it with the extended flaps. After having mounted the fuselage, we perforated with a drill the air intakes mounted in many places of the fuselage.
Beautiful are the landing gears, necessitating only of the brake fluid pipes, scratch built with iron wires; the wheel wells are fairly good also even if they must be detailed with strips of thin plasticard and metallic wire in the part in the wing, also simulating the piping.
The three ventral airbrakes have been fixed open, as is often seen, depicting the plane on the ground, and they were furnished from the box with the relative actuating gears. The interior of the wheel well and of the airbrakes is of the same Natural Metal of the lower part of the fuselage, like also the gear struts and the hydraulic actuators. The wheels are in Green 24092 (Gunze Sangyo H302), the same color of the front radome and of the dielectric panel on the lower fin.
We decided to adopt the standard load for the short-range air-to-air missions, the GP-9 central gun, fixed in the Indian MiG-21FLs, and two K-13 Atoll IR-guided missiles, a copy of the old American AIM-9B Sidewinder. Those furnished by the kit are good, but we have decided to ameliorate them replacing the nose with of the transparent sprue to simulate the infrared sensor. The pylons and the underwing tanks are in Natural Metal like the lower part of the fuselage and the missiles are gloss White with a strip 2 mm wide posted at 3 mm behind the front fins and with the extremities of the back fins in Ochre; on them we applied some stencils coming from other boxes of Russian aircraft.
After the painting of the model we applied the canopy, for which we built the braces. The inside part has been colored with the usual Blue-Green with Black and Red panels, written with White. The canopy must be fixed paying attention to the inclination, using always Kristal Kleer.
Here we are at the painting scheme. If there is permitted do personal considerations, we have chosen the aircraft coded "C992" with the strange scheme which you see because for many years it struck our imagination, at first in a color table appeared on the old "Storia dell'Aviazione" (History of the Aviation) published by Fabbri Editore, and after on the color cover of the Squadron's "MiG-21 Fishbed in Action", and finally in b/w on the Internet sites about to the war of the 1971 among which we suggest http://members.tripod.com/~JaganPVS/photo714.htm. Just from one of the webmasters of these sites, Shivshankar Sastry, we were able to get information on the precise the colors of "C992" in its Tiger cammo. Shiv obtained this from one of the pilots who flew these aircraft during the war. Here we report what we discovered: on the desert West front, where the harder fights were (even if we ignore for a moment that "our" MiG was a Sabre-killer), the Indian aircraft were painted on the field with mimetic colors directly over the original Natural Metal. One of the more exciting schemes was that of the "C992" that had a background of Yellow Sand we represented with a FS 33531 (Gunze H313), with irregular stripes of Dark Brown FS 30045 (80% Gunze H72+ 20% Black) and retouches of a Light Maroon FS 30219 (Gunze H310) among a strip and the other. The lower surfaces and the canopy maintained the Natural Metal instead, fairly diffuse practice still on the MiG-21 Indians of the last versions. Characteristic is the fact that the strips have been applied from different "artists", in fact the shape has many variations, and they could be found three styles, one for the nose, with more undulated stripes, one for the back and for the wings, with strips similar to those of a tiger, and one for the tail, with strips more frequent and more neat. Many of these dark strips go in the lower zone, going sometimes off from the Sand background and ending directly on the Natural Metal.
The lower surfaces have been instead painted before with a series of gloss Grey hands of varied hue, and then rubbed with SNJ aluminum powder, to represent correctly the varied shades of the metal.
We have then painted all the model with the Xtracolor gloss transparent varnish to ease the adhesion of the decals. For as concern the latter, we have examined various sheets with Indian insignias, Superscale and Cutting Edge, but in no case the color too much light the Orange of the roundels has convinced us. It can be commonly few discernible, specially on the Fishbed, from the Italian red. For this reason, we used the Italian roundels from Tauro Model decals, belonging to those old series known for have a too much Orange Red, and repainting the center circle instead of a darker Green. We painted the fin flash always with masking, while the codes "C992" originate from our spare decals. The codes have been applied on a panel Natural Metal, in fact in the reality they avoided to obliterate them with the over applied field scheme. Also the roundels, as can be seen in the photos, were slightly overpainted. Obviously the use of Super Set before the application of the insignias, and then of Super Sol over of them, ameliorated their adherence greatly.
To complete the weathering we passed, with a flat brush, the oil based Bruno in the incisions, fading it then with paper handkerchiefs. An abundant hand of Super Flat accentuated the weathering. The result has been a "real life" airplane, as should be been the examples used from the Indians at the time of the second conflict with Pakistan.
Date: 08/25/2006
Owner: Webmaster
Size: 5 items
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