Airfix 1/72 Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23 Flogger

AIRFIX (HELLER) 1:72 MIKOYAN GUREVICH MIG-23 FLOGGER

Reviewer: Paulo Ivo Teixeira (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 31 August 2008

Kit Details:

Airfix MiG-23 Flogger 1/72 scale, kit # 03036, from 1990. Sturdy top-opening box in excellent condition, from the days when Airfix and Heller were a happy couple (box says "Made in France"). From e-Bay for 4.04 GB pounds incl. p&p in March 2006.

Aircraft History:

This is already covered in the excellent Inbox Reviews of Marjan Urekar and Reimo Soosar.

Kit Parts:

66 silver-coloured injection-moulded parts, plus one-piece canopy, all floating freely inside box. In true Airfix style, the larger parts were off the sprues. Minor amounts of flash, some ejector pin marks. Finely raised panel lines, engraved control surfaces. Main fuselage split horizontally as is the norm with swing-wing aircraft; separate rear section with tailfin split vertically.

Instructions:

One 25 cm x 50 cm (10 in x 20 in) sheet folded in two, featuring: short history of aircraft with some technical specifications in English, French, German, Spanish and Italian; general instructions and explanation of symbols in the same 5 languages; 8 easy-to-follow construction steps, including some detail painting instructions; painting and decalling guide showing 4-views of aircraft, with references to the now defunct Airfix paint range only.

Colour Schemes:

Two bare metal (silver) Flogger B's of the Soviet Air Force and a camouflaged Flogger E of the Lybian Air Force. Units not known in either case.

Decals:

Very small sheet with just red stars for wings and tail, red or blue aircraft numbers (Flogger B), roundels (with separate central dots), fin flashes and aircraft numbers (Flogger E), plus TWO sets of TWO stencils.

Cockpit/wheel well detail:

Very spartan cockpit consisting of decent-looking (but plain) one-piece seat and floor, control column and instrument panel with raised (and somewhat overscale) detail. No side consoles. Raised detail in main wheel bays and on the insides of bay doors.

Options:

Swing wings, operated by a flimsy-looking connection bar. Undercarriage up or down, if down ventral fin must be folded. Moveable tailplanes. Choice of ordnance includes centreline fuel tank and either 2 x R-3S (AA-2 "Atoll"), IR-guided AAMs on fuselage pylons, 1 x R-23R (AA-7 "Apex"), radar-guided AAM under left shoulder pylon and 1 x R-23T (AA-7 "Apex"), IR-guided AAM under right shoulder pylon (Flogger B); OR 4 x R-3S (AA-2 "Atoll"), IR-guided AAMs on fuselage pylons and shoulder pylons (Flogger E).

Construction:

Construction started with assembling the wings. These are composed of two parts, the main body of the wing, and a small plastic rectangle that fits into a recess on the bottom of the main wing. Why Airfix couldn't mould the whole wing as one piece is beyond me, as this provides no extra detail whatsoever, only additional gaps to fill (they are small, so white glue to the rescue).

I then proceeded to paint s number of parts while still on the sprue: the outside of all undercarriage bay doors and the two-part ventral fin, the underwing pylons, as well as the wings and fuselage undersides, were painted light aircraft blue, this is approximately FS35466 (Hu 65). The air intakes and the exhasut can were painted flat black (Hu 33) inside, as was the anti-glare panel and the control column. Finally, the cockpit, cockpit floor and aft bulkhead, and the instrument panel, were painted a turquoise blue colour (Hawk Turquoise 61-37 from the Citadel Colour range, manufactured by the Games Workshop, England) which seems a good approximation to what I've seen in photos of Soviet-era fighters, perhaps a touch too dark. The pilot's seat was painted Light Ghost Grey, with cream (Hu 103) cushions; seat belts were added, made from masking tape and painted Light Ghost Grey with silver (Hu 11) buckles. The (huge!) raised detail on the instrument panel was coloured (no need to dry-brush, as it is sooo big) black and green with permanent markers, with a few dots of satin white (Hu 130) added to liven it up and simulate the data displays.

Now the thing with swing-wing aircraft is that you really need to paint the wings before you assemble the fuselage, so next I attacked the wing and tailplane uppers. These were first painted cream (Hu 103); some 5 or 6 coats were needed to cover the silver plastic, maybe I should have primed it with white, but then it was too late. Now Hu 103 is actually a very yellow colour ("custard cream" would probably be a more appropriate name) when just painted (approx. FS33618), but fades slightly (to approx. FS33695) on curing. Next colour to go on was military brown FS30117 (Hu 186), this is a rich brown colour that seemed to agree better with photo evidence (see http://www.airliners.net) than FS30219 as suggested on the Russian Aircraft Camouflage & Colours website (http://br.geocities.com/alvmaia/Mig/). The last camouflage colour was forest green FS34127 (Hu 150).

The cockpit floor was then glued to the lower fuselage half, to which were added the seat and the control stick (the latter painted flat black with a silver tip). Weight, in the form of lead chippings embedded in plasticine, was placed in the nose and behind the cockpit rear bulkhead. Holes were opened for the ordnance and a probe to go under the nose; there are two options for this depending on which version (Soviet or Lybian) you are building. The instrument panel was glued to the upper fuselage half, after which the two fuselage halves were cemented together: fit is so-so, sticky tape and clothes pegs were used, but there was no avoiding some gaps/steps on either side of the nose that required filling/sanding. At this point also the rear fuselage was added, this is split vertically and includes the tailplane. Fit of this is rather poor and leaves largish gaps, so more filler to the rescue. Had I intended to have moveable tailplanes, I would have had to add then to the rear fuselage before cementing: they have long pins that go into the fuselage and are meant to be joined by a connector inside, so that the tailplanes do not need to be cemented to the fuselage sides. Following the general principle that "the more parts move, the likelier they are to break off", I decided to have static tailplanes and leave attaching them till later. Also it would have been awkward to have the tailplanes in place at this stage, with all the filling and sanding still to be done around them.

And a lot of filling and sanding there was, both around the rear fuselage and around the intakes. Take care not to obliterate the landing lights, which are barely visible raised details on the engine undersides, right aft of the intake joins. Once this was done these areas were also painted in the top camouflage colours. Because the MiG-23 is too small for my favourite masking method (Patafix sausages), the pattern was first lightly drawn with a soft pencil on the base colour and then brush-painted freehand. The exception was the demarcation line between top and botton fuselage colours. There is conflicting photographic evidence as to whether this should be straight or irregular, in the end I went for straight, and masked it with tape over the bottom fuselage colour. I also temporarily stuck the main undercarriage bay doors in the closed position with drops of white glue, so they could be painted over right and detached later for a wheels-down model. The nose radome and dielectric panels on the tail fin and ventral strake were painted dark gull grey FS36231 (Hu 140), which approximately matches photos. The rear fuselage around the exhaust was done in silver (Hu 11), taking care to paint around the brakes (which should be the camouflage colours).

In the meantime I dealt with the missiles. As noted by Marjan Urekar, the R-23R is too pointy, the R-23T too blunt. So I got out the file, blunted the tip of the R-23R, and sharpened that of the R-23T a bit. Shape of the forward fins is also incorrect, as can be seen in many photos, but after a few minutes' consideration I decided I could not make them look righter just by trimming and sanding, more surgery would be required that may in the end not give a major improvement, so I left the fins alone. The R-3S on the other hand look really bad, so I just tossed them into the spares box and got out some AIM-9 Sidewinders left over from my recent A-7D renovation (see article on SMAKR). The R-3S is actually a reverse-engineered copy of the AIM-9, so this seemed acceptable. The bodies of all missiles were painted white, first flat white (my old, discoloured Hu 34) to cover the silver plastic, then satin white (Hu 130). The R-3S's then got gloss red (Hu 19) tips. Exhausts were coloured black with a marker pen, to simulate depth. The missile pylons were mildly problematic: most photos of MiG-23s show them painted the same colour as the underfuselage, while a few show some of them wearing the top fuselage camouflage. After some hesitation I decided to go with the majority and paint them light aircraft blue (Hu 65), there was a big sink mark on one of the glove pylons that required filling and sanding.

The undercarriage legs had to be cleaned of some minor seams/flash, and were then painted silver (Hu 11). Tyres were painted flat black (Hu 33), wheels US medium green FS34102 (Hu 117), and mudguards light aircraft blue (Hu 65), as shown in photos of the real aircraft. The insides of the undercarriage bays and of the undercarriage bay doors were painted gunmetal (Hu 53), which I think agrees with photo evidence (it's either this or a dark grey, hard to tell really). A number of scoops and antennas were then added, first to the undersides, then the undercarriage was glued in place As is well known, the undercarriage of a MiG-23 is a complex contraption. The main undercarriage doors had to be split into three parts each, two attach to the fuselage and one to the undercarriage leg. The nose wheel is less problematic, still it required splitting the rear half of the undernose IR seeker (at lest this is what I think it is!) into two, one half to go on each door. Then two rear fuselage scoops were added to the topsides and painted. Wingtip lights were coloured green (right) and red (left) with marker pens, over a flat white (Hu 34) undercoat.

At this point the missile pylons, with the missiles already glued on, were attached. Whilst the glove pylons fitted well, there were gaps at the base of the underfuselage ones that seriously imperilled their stability. These were filled with white glue, sanded and re-painted. It should also be mentioned that the locating holes for these pylons are located too far back (or is the fuselage just too short?) so that the R-3S missiles almost get in the way of the undercarriage!

Last to be dealt with was the canopy, painted in the top camouflage colours with a copper (Hu 14) sealant; the pitot tube, painted dark gull grey FS36231 (Hu 140) with a silver (Hu 11) tip; the dorsal antenna, painted silver (Hu 11); and another tiny antenna that goes fore and to the right of the windscreen. Unlike most of my builds, the canopy was a very good fit; all other bits also attached problem-free.

And then I was ready for decalling. Small though the decal sheet is, it seemed to contain more than I could see in photos of the actual aircraft. In the end I used just the red stars, the squadron numbers and a couple of red circles to go onto each air intake.

Accuracy:

This is the same kit as was reviewed in the box, in its Heller incarnation, by Marjan Urekar. In a word, accuracy is poor: the kit is dimensionally wrong on a number of counts, many bumps and antennas are either in the wrong place or missing altogether, the R-3S missiles are particularly bad; refer to Marjan's review for details.

Conclusion:

A nice and simple enough kit of very questionable accuracy. As Marjan Urekar wrote in his inbox review, "Avoid unless you build just for fun - and that's not such a bad thing!" Well, I build mostly for fun, so I went ahead with it and had a good time. The more fastidious modeller will want to steer well clear of it though. ;-)

References:

Chris Chant (ed.), Concise Guide to Military Aircraft of the World (Temple Press, London, 1981).
Paul Eden and Soph Moeng (eds.), The Encyclopedia of World Aircraft (Silverdale Books, Leicester, 2002).
Michael Sharpe, Attack and Interceptor Jets (Dempsey Parr, Bristol, 1999).
http://www.airliners.net

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