1/72 Condor Mikoyan MiG-21 Bison

Gallery Article by Ratish Nair on Aug 15 2014

India Independence Day

 

Here is a model I built of the MiG-21 Bison based off the Condor MiG-21-93 kit. The kit overall is decent with its cheap price being it's biggest draw. It has some shape flaws, plenty of flash and ejector pin holes at places. The kit itself is fairly straightforward lacking too many details and can be put together quickly albeit with minor fit issues. The quality of plastics is poor and I ended up cracking the canopy while treating it with Future. 

 

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Conversion to make it look more like a proper Bison needs some changes, only some of which I did here. The most obvious is the shape of the ECM pods on the wing roots. The ones supplied with the kit need to be beefed up with a distinctive kink towards the rear. I also added the RWR pods on the leading edge of the fin. Similar pods are needed on the trailing edge, but were omitted. The cockpit got a scratchbuilt HUD and the windscreen had to be reshaped to look right. I also added the starboard side AoA vane as is standard in all Bison.

Overall, I am pretty satisfied with the way it looks. Lot of bang for the buck in this little kit, especially the really nice RVV-AEs. 

Ratish Nair

      

Photos and text © by Ratish Nair