Cold War FrankenMiG-27

[thierry laurent]

The front doors from the LEM kit are acceptable. They are just too long as the comparison of both the LEM and Aires front LG wells showed it in the picture I posted some days ago. It is just a matter of shortening them a little bit. Then, I used my Proxxon minidrill with a grinding head to open the oval area corresponding to the wheels. Alas, there is no internal detail and the doors retraction mechanism is not given by Aires as normally Trumpeter parts should be used.

 

Fortunately, Profimodeler includes such parts in their MiG-23 front landing gear detail set. The eight parts of the doors retraction mechanism are a little bit tricky to assemble (as many Profi sets) but with a little bit of patience, a quite nice 'in scale' system can be obtained. The internal side of the doors is also given in the set and their end was embossed with a pen head but this will still ask for some work.

 

[thierry laurent]

I also started to have a look at the front LG leg itself. It looks a little bit skinny but this feeling may be wrong as the full-scale one is rather thin. I think that some horizontal reinforcements are missing as well as some components such as the braking system. So, it is useless saying that the front leg will also ask for some work. This picture clearly shows the Frankenstein nature of that flying creature! LEM leg, HpH wheels and mud/grass collector and Aires gear leg retraction arm!

 

 

I noticeably reduced the length of the front LG leg because it was far too long. This is clearly the consequence of the far too deep LEM front LG bay. I still have to find an easy way to adapt it to the Aires bay. The holes in the HpH wheels needed to be enlarged as the LEM axis is thicker than the Trumpeter one that is normally used with the HpH set.

[blackbetty]

be careful that you have the right leg. i modified mine after pics only to find out the kit one is correct and i made another version....

[thierry laurent]

Indeed! There are various differences according to the marks. However, I got tons of walkaround pictures on Russian, Ukrainian and Baltic states websites and this includes a serious amount of pics of early 27s kept in museums. 

[thierry laurent]

I received that other Profimodeller set from Hannants yesterday.

 

 

I will only use part of the contents as some of them are not relevant for the 27. Typically the pylons are different. However, I can use the detailing parts for the tanks, their pylons, some details I can put on the other pylons, the sway braces for all of them, the missing tail antenna, the stab support detailing parts and one or two other welcome items! The remaining items will essentially be the larger parts such as the wing detailing elements. They will go in my MiG-23 box as they could be finally useful for that one.

 

 

[thierry laurent]

I also got a brand new small set from Aires. Curiously, it is not released under the Quickboost brand label. It is very simple as it is made of four parts but will give the possibility to open the engine turbostarter belly doors.

 

 

As again it is made for the Trumpeter kit and the shapes of the LEM kit are different I wondered how much work would be required to use them. However, after more than one hour of cautious work, I could insert them nicely and secured them with CA glue. I just had to sand a little bit the edges but this was easier than foreseen.

 

 

And this picture is showing how this should finally look when the two small hatches will be added.

 

 

This is not going to be the most obvious detail but anything that can bring a little bit of busy feeling in some areas is welcome!

[blackbetty]

that looks very nice, well worth the effort

[RLWP]

5 hours ago, thierry laurent said:

I will only use part of the contents as some of them are not relevant for the 27. 

 

I'm finding this a sensible approach with any AM. I'm particularly wary of sets that provide 'corrections' without explaining why

 

Richard

[thierry laurent]

Indeed! I'm always double checking as in some cases the 'correction' parts are less accurate than the original ones! In the current case, you can see the set giving thinner tank fins whereas pictures of the trailing edge of the actual ones clearly show a quite noticeable thickness! So, never trust blindly photoetched sets. The problem is far less current with resin sets. Photoetched set producers have far too often the wrong idea to fill the fret with quite useless parts! 

[MikeMaben]

 

   

[thierry laurent]

As I was still considering one of last noticeable issues (how to secure the wings), I had a look at the top fuselage and wing gloves. The main seam between them is far from being ideally designed to be hidden and its location complicates noticeably the set-up of a solution to support solidly the wings. It is too bad LEM did not use the same approach than Trumpeter: a solid box enclosing the wing. As I had a look at my MiG-23 parts to look after a solution, I also thought that area of the Chinese kit has also far nicer panel and screw scribing. And that is something that I could not easily replicate on the resin parts. Then, I had an idea and it was the right one: I found on ebay the two corresponding MiG-23 sprues for less then 10 USD! Adding parts from another source will create other issues but I'm sure this will be easier to solve. And the best part is the fact I do not even have to wait for them. I will simply use the sprues from my MiG-23 and replace them by the new ones that will arrive in some weeks! So, it looks I hit two birds with a single stone! Yepeee! I will post some pictures tomorrow. 

[thierry laurent]

I had to slow down a little bit the pace with regard to the heavy surgery but while assessing where the new cuts will be made to use the Trumpeter wing box, I progressively cut, sanded and puttied with Magic Sculpt the rare pin holes in the Reskit bomb ejector racks.

 

This seemed to be a never ending job because of the way the parts (typically the sway braces) were casted on the gates. To say it short, this took ages but I finally ended this quite tedious task. Sanding each of those tiny parts was not really funny as handling them was difficult.

The next step will be the assembly and the addition of the missing elements (the connectors and cabling).

 

[Derek B]

This going to look stunning when completed Thierry - good work.

 

Derek

[thierry laurent]

Ok, now we will have a look at the wing box problem.

 

This picture shows the two main problems of the area. First, all parts have to be mated with butt joints and with the weigth and level effect of the wings, this is not really the best approach. Second, there should not be a seam between the largest section of each wing glove (at their front)  and the upper fuselage. This means that you should get a baby skin smooth section and restore the panel lines in the resin of the most visible area of the kit... Ouch!

 

 

Useless to say I scratched my head to find an appropriate solution as I've not been convinced by the pictures of most of the assembled kits I saw. To me, this is probably the most important drawback of that kit.

[thierry laurent]

As I already wrote, I ordered the two wing box sprues of the Trumpeter MiG-23 kit for some dollars on ebay. The following picture clearly shows that the parts from both kits are not in the same league regarding the details.

 

The pivot points are also far better on the plastic part and using it is also solving the panel screw issue I had on the upper fuselage. So, this plastic option is solving different problems at the same time.