Italeri 1/48 Mig-27 ‘Flogger-D’
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Introduction
No time this month for nostalgic musings about Modeling Now and Then.
There’s a serious build to be done. Since emerging from my Dark
Ages, it’s the first Russian jet I’ve done. Back in my teen
modeling days, I did three: the Monogram ‘Forty-Niner’ box-scale
Badger bomber, Hawk’s supposed ¼-inch scale MiG-15, and of
course the inimitable Aurora MiG-19 aka Yak-25. More on these some other
time…a lot’s changed since way back Then, and Now, this new
kit is orders of magnitude more complex and accurate!
 Instead
of saying “the best things in life are free”, it's more accurate
to say “the most expensive things in life are free”. The publisher
of this Internet Modeler site, Chris Banyai-Riepl, came to the February
meeting of the Seattle Chapter of the I.P.M.S., smiling sweetly and bearing
“gifts”, among them this kit. I was able to take it just for
the asking. The catch, of course, was that I actually had to agree to
build and review it. Pretty high moral cost, eh whot? As soon as I got
home, I opened the box and put the bags full of sprues out on the tabletop.
They were all cleanly molded, with very little flash and no obvious sink
holes or ejector pin marks showing on any surface that would be exposed.
It has—you know, I can hardly say the phrase nowadays without adding
the word “dreaded”—raised panel lines. In all the reviews
I read, this seems to be a major deficiency. I can’t understand
why. I’ve been to many air shows and taken lots of pictures of real
airplanes and about the least conspicuous things about any of them are
the panel lines. Certainly the elaborately accented, shaded, washed and
re-washed artistry done to plastic kits, so common in kit reviews and
contest pictures, don’t in the least resemble real airplanes…
 I’ll
get off my soapbox detour and merely observe that this kit’s lines
are raised, but are quite subtle and delicate. There’s no sign of
rivets anywhere.
What there was about the sprues: familiarity! A little voice inside
said, “I’ve got this already!” Not exactly: A quick
perusal of my kit stash showed that I have the ESCI MiG-23. The moldings
look the same.
But not quite. The forward fuselages, with their jet intakes and nose
cone, were quite different. What's all this confusion between 23 and 27?
 The
nature of our hobby is such that we could just glue different pieces of
plastic together and paint them with random colors, but we don't. I could
not resist pawing through first my own bookshelf, then the library’s,
then supplementing these with a World Wide Web search from my favorite
search engine, DogPile.
It seems the MiG-23 was conceived and designed as an advanced air superiority
weapon, a little later in time than the infamous F-111. It shares some
features, most notably a very similar swing-wing design, but avoids some
of the One-eleven’s faults. Of course, much of the trouble with
the F-111 was that it incorporated too many state-of-the-art, or even
beyond state-of-the-art, features in one airframe. No wonder it was so
difficult and expensive to bring it to completion and service. There also
turned out to be great confusion about its role. The basic idea that an
attack plane for the Air Force and a fleet defense interceptor for the
Navy could be one and the same machine, or nearly so, seems incredible
to me. The story of the political struggles around all this is truly strange—that
would be capitalized “Strange” as in “Robert Strange
McNamara”.
 Eventually,
the F-111 emerged from its messy gestation as a potent strike aircraft.
The MiG-23, designed just for aerial combat, was successful from the start,
and has served for years and in large numbers with the Soviet V.V.S. and
client states. That’s what the ESCI kit represents.
From this successful role, its designers derived a ground attack version.
(I’ve no idea if this was to follow the F-111’s lead.) More
and stronger hard points were added, along with larger, sturdier wheels
and tires, and most of all a new nose. The big round cone on the MiG-23
held a large search-and-intercept radar set. The new nose is referred
to as the “duckbill” in Russian, and tapers smoothly almost
straight down from a slightly revised cockpit with a higher seat position.
It's filled with more modest sized instruments and sensors suitable for
laying bombs, unguided rockets, and cannon fire on ground targets. After
some interim versions bearing designations like MiG-23BM, the final version,
with all modifications put into large-scale production, is named the MiG-27.
This is the version the new Italeri kit reproduces.
 This
is just a review of the basic kit. It would certainly form a foundation
for a serious contest-winning model, if its simplicity were augmented
by aftermarket accessories, such as the photoetch set that Chris described
in February's
issue of IM.
Construction
As I stated before, the same basic set of moldings is used for both
the MiG-23 and this -27. The way this is done: the main fuselage is split
just forward of the wings. The major differences between the two aircraft
are all in the nose section, with the -27 using simplified subsonic jet
engine air intakes, a higher cockpit, and of course the slender nose cone.
This section is assembled first, starting with a simple cockpit assembly.
The seat is in three parts, and installs onto a floorboard, with an instrument
panel and a joystick. Perfectly fine, if basic, moldings.
The fit among the main parts here is reasonably good, but was in need
of some filling. I did this by super-gluing everything together. The best
CA I’ve ever found is Pacer Zap-A-Gap, medium viscosity, in the
green bottle. A generous bead goes all around and over the joints. I accelerate
it, then immediately step to the sink and use 3M Wet-Or-Dry sandpaper,
starting with 180 grit, to smooth everything out. The process wore away
a few panel lines, but these were easy to restore with a few strokes of
a sharp #11 blade.
 In
the second major step, the wing halves are fitted together and installed
between fuselage top and bottom plates on pivot pins. The wing halves
have rounded interlocking tabs that permit the wings to move together
through the full sweepback range. While putting on the top plate, I let
the two wing panels slip out of alignment, to odd angles. I hastily pried
loose the top plate, since the glue hadn't yet set, realigned the wings,
and glued the top back down again. Later, once the glue had set, I was
experimentally flexing the wings, and once again got them out of alignment.
However, I realized that there was sufficient ‘play’ in the
assembly that by gently pulling one wing tip up, and the other down, the
interlocking tabs could be reset without taking the whole thing apart.
In sum, you don't need to obsess about holding the wings in perfect interlocked
alignment as you glue this section together.
What’s more important is to be careful with your dry-fitting.
Normally, I build World War II fighter planes, and find that modern jet
fuselages have much more involved geometry, having to accommodate airflow
through to the engines. The top and bottom fuselage halves are molded
to be a good fit, but require care in actually gluing them together so
the seams are tight and at the same planar level. Also, on this kit, to
accommodate the quite different assemblies of the MiG-23 and -27, the
inner and outer jet intake plates need to be fitted to the basic fuselage
shape. There are few alignment pins or marks, and careful dry fitting
is needed to minimize joint lines and gaps. One minor point: each jet
intake is fitted with clear lights underneath, and these cannot be held
off for installation after the paint job is complete. They must be glued
into the air intakes early on. My solution was to glue them in place,
then cover the clear lenses with a double coating of Ambroid “EZ
Mask”.
 The
machine is fitted with a ventral fin, low near the back of the fuselage,
and more than half of its area folds sideways for landing. On this kit,
the two parts are a press fit together, with no hinging or other mechanism.
The remaining steps of the assembly have to do with fitting small parts,
mainly the landing gear and its fairly elaborate strut work and multiple
door panels. Although the gear looks complex, it wasn't particularly difficult
to fit everything together, with one exception. The largest main gear
doors are supposed to be held up and away from the main strut joint, next
to the wheel, on two very slender plastic pegs. They were so astonishingly
small I dug out my precision caliper, and found their cross-section to
be a mere 30 x 33 thousandths, with a length of 5/16ths of an inch. I
admire the moldmaker’s skill but knew I was too much of a hack builder
to make these work. So I carefully cut down the small square pegs the
pins were supposed to butt-joint to, on the doors, drilled shallow holes
there instead with my pin vise, then super-glued in substitutes made from
29-thousandths plain iron floral wire. I held these in the holes, in alignment,
while the glue set, then used more super-glue to anchor the assemblies
to the indentations in the gear struts. This all worked out OK.
 Step
seven shows installation of the two-piece canopy, a pair of wing ‘gloves’
(which seem not to have appeared on all variants), and a pair of small
intakes to flank the front half of the fin. These are each molded in two
pieces, and take some care getting them aligned, but the reward is that
they actually look like scoops. The modeler doesn't need to drill them
out, or simulate the openings with paint. A last step shows the fitting
of a wide variety of ordnance: fuel tanks, bombs, and rockets. These are
added at three points under the fuselage, a pair under the wing root stubs,
or gloves, and one under each main wing panel. On the one-to-one-scale
MiG-27, these racks do not swivel, unlike on the F-111, and so can only
carry loads with the wings splayed out to their maximum span.
Apparently, a cannon was used on some MiG-23 variants, with a greatly
improved rotary Gatling-type fitted to the -27. One of the few mistakes/omissions
in this kit: the cannon assembly has no pegs, nor any alignment marks
on the fuselage underside to locate it. You have to make do with the assembly
diagram, or a detailed 3-view from an outsider reference source. (The
latter might help clarify things like antenna shape and placement…)
 I
haven’t yet fitted all this ordnance, but I did enjoy the build
up to this point, and am now putting finishing touches on my paint scheme.
I’m not absolutely positive MiG-27s served during the tangled civil
war in Yemen. Certainly, MiG-23BM and –BN models did, and these
are sort of interim versions between the –23 and the –27,
sharing the same duckbill nose assembly, but with some detail differences
in the air intakes and some other equipment. But after acquiring the Osprey
book Arab Air Forces, I really wanted to do this color scheme and these
small air force markings.
Conclusion
This model I’ve built will win no contests, but the basic kit
is good and I unreservedly recommend it. Thank you, Chris and Italeri,
for the “gift”… Advanced builders will have to dress
up the plain cockpit, jet intakes, and landing gear bays with aftermarket
photoetched parts or equivalent. But any and all builders can.
Thanks to MRC for the review
sample.
Build what you want, the way you want to, and above all, have fun! |
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