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ZHENGDEFU 1:72 JIAN II (MIG-15)
Reviewer:
Derrick Winters (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted:
4 August 2002
As most military aviations know, the MiG-15 was based on captured German personnel and technology by the Russians with the keynote in the MiG-15 laying in its design of simplicity and swept wings. The MiG-15 Fagot was operated widely by many air forces including North Korea and China in the 50's Korean War. The MiG-15bis version was an improved single-seat fighter over previous variants with better cannon, fuel capacity, avionics and engine, with also a stronger airframe. The Chinese obtained the rights to licence-build their own versions of the MiG-15 and MiG-15bis for their air force which was redesignated the Jian II fighter or Shenyang J-2. Some of these were also exported under the F-2 designation to smaller air forces in the region.
Zhengdefu boxes are notorious for being oversized and this is no exception and they are marketed, quite purposely I would say, to look very similar to Revell kits. Having heard a number of stories about Zhengdefu kits – their origins, buildability etc I certainly was going into this project with some pre-conceived ideas, but I also wanted to make my own assessment so I picked this one up very cheaply from a toy store. The box is easily large enough to house a quarter scale kit of this subject. The Jian II fighter is of course an adaptation or Chinese built version of the MiG-15bis aircraft as touched on in the aircraft overview above. The kit number for this kit is DF321.
There are about 45 light grey injection molded parts and two fairly crude clear parts packaged in a plastic bag for protection. In spite of the box art, which shows a rather nice looking finished model, the kit has pretty shallow but heavy engraved panel lines and excessive rivet detail. The plastic is soft and the quality of the kit does seem to convey that it is far from being a ‘top shelf’ product. There are crude seam lines and a few ejector pin marks that need removal and cleaning. But it does contain a small tube of glue which I set aside for later use on other projects.
As you would expect the instruction sheet contains mainly Chinese text with English translation that in some parts are [amusingly] confusing and [amusingly] wrong! There are eight stages of assembly described in an easy to follow manner with only a couple of areas where you may need to refer to outside assistance for precise placement of parts. The sheet also includes a brief history, safety hints and sketches to cover the six colour options for the project. There is a sprue diagram, which is both confusing and inaccurate and colour call-outs are by generic name only.
A fairly crude ejection seat replica is placed in a cockpit tub along with an instrument panel and control column. A fair bit more could be added with some aftermarket detail sets. This fits inside the fuselage section rather easily and a bit of weight is recommended in being placed underneath. It will be a tail sitter otherwise.
Once the fuselage halves are sealed together there is a fair bit of seam removal and just blending the fuselage lines in smoothly. The nose ring is added resulting in a fit that requires sanding to blend it into the nose contours.
The wings are upper and lower halves and fit together well after some preparatory mating surface sanding and removal of a couple of interior ejector pin marks that might get in the way. The fit of the wings to the root of the fuselage results in a gap that certainly needs filling and sanding, but otherwise fit is okay. There is a slight step at the roots which need filing down to smoothen the join. There is a similar story to the tailplanes.
The undercarriage is pretty straight forward although a touch on the crude side and there is some structural detail in the wells. The doors do not fit very well in the closed position meaning the kit is catered really for wheels-down only. There is no open air brake option in the kit, in spite of what the finished model shows on the boxart, so don’t think the kit provides this option. Drop tanks are added to the wings and these are a little on the crude side with the fins being overly thick and a very poor fit.
The canopy is in two pieces, allowing you to have it open but the clear parts are brittle and foggy. The fit is also a bit on the poor side, and it is probably best to have an open cockpit so you can at least to some degree hide the crudeness of the canopy parts. These are best replaced by a spare. Then there are the external probes and antennae bits which are on the thick side and best replaced by stretched sprue and spares.
Overall, construction was pretty straight forward. There were some parts that were of poor fit and needed attention, but generally a bit of test fitting first, preparing the mating surface with a bit of sanding and some removal of ejector pins and it was pretty uneventful. The real downside is just the quality of the plastic more than anything else.
Most Jian II’s/MiG-15’s were natural metal or a aluminium matt type of finish. However, I decided to pursue a Dark Green/Tan brown camouflage over blue-grey undersides example purely on the basis that the rivet detail is excessive and even after primer would show up pretty crudely on a metal finished example. Light grey primer was still needed to seal in some of the various spots of filler and to help blend in the panel line and rivet detail a little better.
The kit caters for six different versions to finish the aircraft as which is certainly an appealing part of the project. However, all call for natural metal finishes which as discussed above will probably not come out as well as one would like given the fairly crude surface detail which will be even more conspicuous in an aluminium-like finish. The six versions come from the air forces of China, North Korea, Albania, Egypt and two from Korean war in Chinese markings.
In a word – poor. I discarded the kit decal options and used some spares but did use a couple of the kit ones. The sheet is quite colourful with all the air forces it caters for and the colour for the main part is pretty spot on. However, it’s the printing that is the major let down, with blurry decals, lines crossing into others and a lot of smudging. The few I used from the kit needed a lot of soaking time but did go onto the model quite well and blended in nicely. If they were printed better they would have actually been quite good.
Again, pretty poor because the model is quite undersized, scaling out at closer to 1/76th than the 72nd scale it purports to be, or around 1cm in all dimensions at model scale. Surface detail as already touched on is inaccurate and overly done and the antennae etc are a bit on the thick side. Otherwise, the profile of the aircraft is captured quite well from the naked eye.
The kit is cheap both in price and quality and is best left on the shelf and instead grab a Italeri, Airfix or Dragon example. The surface detail is poor and overdone, the decal sheet is poor and the accuracy leaves a bit to be desired. It is a pretty simple kit for someone with intermediate skills and above, but with the amount of sanding, test fitting etc still needed it is probably beyond a beginner to get a well blended finish. It is cheap and it shows. As you can guess, I would not recommend it.
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