thierry laurent

8 pounds? You are still 'lucky'! Here the amount recently jumped to 22 euros (close to 18 pounds)! Useless to say I never purchase anymore a full kit out of the EC unless there is no other choice... ☹️

Just ordered the same one!

Hi Dave. Unless you have a very stable drill press, I would do that manually. A manually used Dremel will not give you the possibility to have a good result for such an operation. If you progressively go from a fine diameter drill bit (e.g. 1mm) to larger ones up to 6mm, the hole will be centered. Use metal drill bits. Hth Thierry

Thanks Reimund. The pictures are quite nice but show D/M & K types. I'm not sure early types were based in DDR. I'm going on searching. There is not one relevant picture in any of the three MiG-27 Russian ebooks I have.

Future was sold in the UK as Johnson Klear. Later, it has been repackaged as a Pledge product. However, take care as the company also released similar but not identical products with names such as Klir. They are milky or yellowish and do not have absolutely identical properties (thicker consistency, less transparent coats, different smell, etc.).

I was quite surprised by the length: only 50cms!

The Trumpeter fuselage has some shape issues, more particularly in its rear section but, to me, that is not too noticeable. The nose has many errors (radome shape, canopy, intake profile, etc.). However, the global dimensions and the fuselage height are ok. I did not really considered the Trumpeter kit in the equation to make a MiG-27 as both planes have noticeably different bellies and fuselage sides because of the sturdier landing gear and the heavy punch gun of the 27. So, I could only use the wings and the upper rear fuselage. Not really worth the cost as except the lack of screws and rivets, the LEM parts are OK for such areas.

I had a second look at that book. If there are not a lot of pictures of early 27 in units, there is a list of users and this clearly showed various guards units got them. I guess this means such planes did not have the guard specific markings on the intake at that time.

Indeed. I will use a combination of LEM and Profimodeller parts for the doors. For the Delta N and camera on the other side, I will probably start from some leftover Sparrows.

By the way, I forget adding this: that exercise made me find an error on the Hph BN nose! Indeed, there is a problem in the shape and location of the external armor plates. Normally the rear edge of such plates should be aligned with the rear edge of the canopy. This is valid for all tactical bomber versions. On the resin nose, the rear edge is located too far (more or less 3mm). Normally, this should not be too noticeable on a BN as the air intake as a kind of variramp hiding the armor edge. However, for a 27, this is more annoying as the boundary layer plate is far smaller... Another issue to solve! By the way, the LEM nose is correct regarding that aspect!

If the plastic is thick enough, there is no problem sanding such pips out of a vacformed part. With thin vacformed parts, simply put some epoxy putty on the other side before sanding the pip.

Holy crap! I'm very happy you did that in 1/12th scale and not in 1/32nd. Otherwise, I think a lot of people would stop modelling as this level of detail can not be reproduced by mere mortals! Have you already considered how to reproduce the main landing gear? Because of the kit weight, this will be a challenge as well.

I can confirm it is possible to remove the 4+mm out of the heigth of the central fuselage of the LEM kit. This allows using a modified Hph nose. Yes! The problem was nearly solved this evening. The air intakes height correction is the last step. This modification work is just a matter of heavy sanding on the fuselage parts edges as foreseen. For the belly, I casted some resin inside the lower fuselage before sanding because the part was quite thin. This will probably somewhat annoy me to locate correctly the Aires MLG bays but I will grind what will be required later. I'm solving problems one per one.

Thanks Olivier. I've the same book and such pictures were taken in Germany a little bit of time before the Russians went back to the East. These are late 27s. Indeed, the story of the Soviet Mig jets is typically as complicated as a soap opera scenario! D, M & K were late or modernized marks commonly used in the eighties. Such types could use smart bombs and missiles. I'm more interested in the initial type that was essentially dumb bombs and rockets capable. I like the weird nose tip of the early birds.

The Britmodeller plans are coming from the PSL Hurricane book. So, my memory stays quite good.