1/72 Academy Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23MF

Gallery Article by Ratish Nair on Aug 15 2014

India Independence Day

 

I read about the issues with the Academy kit and had been avoiding it a long time, but couldn't resist the simple fit and the cheap price. This kit can be made into a decent MF with little work as I discovered. The following are the major changes I made - Added 2mm to the nose radome, cleaned up aux inlets where plastic was missing with evergreen strips, added the stabilizer extensions like in late-model floggers, scribed the double hinge on the vertical stab, added rear view mirror and added the extra frame on canopy, scratch built pitot tube and odd rod antenna on the nose. Left the bare cockpit more or less untouched, but added the really nice True Details KM-1 seat. 

 

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The aircraft is painted in the 'jungle' camo that they were delivered in. I took some artistic liberty with the camo pattern as they didn't seem consistent across aircraft. This aircraft is depicted as it served with the No.224 'Warlords' sqn. sometime in the 1980's.

Overall, I think this one looks like a poor man's RV Resin Flogger (Hope to snag one of those sometime!) Hope you guys like this exotic Indian MiG that wasn't as famous as it's stablemates in IAF service. 

Ratish Nair

      

Photos and text © by Ratish Nair