OzMods
Scale Models is an
Australian company that produces kits and conversion sets. This latest
offering is their
little 1/144 MiG-15bis model kit. It is a injection molded styrene kit consisting
of styrene parts with 2 vacuformed canopies and a sheet of decals for 4
different MiG-15bis.
There are a variety of 1/144 kits
on the market and surprisingly enough they have very good detail....recessed
panel lines and such. As far as I know...this is the only 1/144 MiG-15bis on the market.
1/144 kits usually lack cockpit detail and also have very thick canopies for
their tiny scale. This kit does very well in these 2 areas and all other
areas for that matter. The cockpit on this kit has reasonable detail. Now....this isn't the sort of detail you'd expect to see in a
1/48
scale kit, but for 1/144 scale...the detail here better than massed produced
kits. On main
stream kits, the cockpit is nothing more that blobs of plastic....but on this
kit you have a separate seat with molded in seatbelts and impressively done
headrest and seat detail. This seat would be very good detail for a 1/72
kit, but in 1/144 it is quite good. My
guess is you would paint the cockpit and follow that with a wash and drybrushing
to
bring out all the recessed and raised detail....switches etc. I could fit
4 of these cockpit tubs on my thumbnail......very small indeed.
The instrument panel is quite
well done, considering you can get 15 of these on my thumbnail.....it is quite
impressive. The detail is recessed, so the plan here would be to paint the instrument
panel in the proper shade of grey(?) and add black to the recessed
instruments by doing a wash and maybe follow that up with some tiny amounts
of Future if you have the skill for that. Detail on
the wheels is quite well done and they even added ribbing detail to the main landing gear
bays.
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instrument
panel |
wheels
and landing gear bay |
The panel lines on the wings and
fuselage etc are all recessed and very fine....these should take a wash with
great ease. The kit comes with 2 vacuformed canopies, which is good for
those of you keen on opening up the canopy to expose the stellar cockpit
detail. The canopy frames are raised.
Click on
images below to see larger images
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fuselage
showing recessed panel lines |
vacuformed
canopies |
There are 4 decal
options.....Chinese Air Force, CSSR Air Force, North Korean Air Force and
the USSR Air Force. For more details about the 4 different paint
schemes.....see the instruction sheets below to the right.
The decals are printed on a clear carrier film, so you'll
have to cut each decal from the carrier film separately, but this isn't a
big deal.....go slow, don't scratch the decals and you'll do just
fine.
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The kit plastic is a hard
styrene....neither good or bad....just letting you know. I test fit some
major parts and they seemed to fit well with panel lines lining up etc.
There are 2 pages of B&W
instructions. Pretty straight forward stuff.
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Click on
images below to see larger images
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You can order this
kit
Drop by their
website for full details on ordering and prices.
I highly recommend
this kit for anyone wanting to add a 1/144 MiG-15bis to their display case or any
1/144 builders. If you've never built 1/144....then you've never really
had fun.....1/144 kits are a blast to build and a challenge to detail if you are
so inclined.
Special thanks to OzMods
Scale Models for the review sample.
Steve
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