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MiG-15SB in Czechoslovakian service


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Hi folks,

I finished this wee plane for club night on Wednesday and managed to take a couple of pictures today. I'll do some more but I ran out of light!

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This is (confusingly) from an early boxing of the Czechoslovakian Service Dual Combo kit. So it's not the one of which they made a handful and then retired, but the one after that. Except that the early version (sprues without three bumps on) is somehow wrong and Eduard will send you a new one if you post them the sprues.

They mention issues in the forward fuselage construction. I did some dry-fitting and thought it seemed tight but OK, so opted to build mine rather than exchange it.

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In the end I did have to do some sanding around the nose ring so it's possible that's been fixed. There's also no positive locating socket for the nose gear, which is odd. I thought I'd glued it in place successfully but it fell out after a trip to the club and might be a bit off in these pictures.

I didn't mind since I got the kit for cheap from HLJ, and it came with nice resin rockets and pylons, plus a full set of etch for the cockpit and masks. The masks were difficult to use successfully (too many pieces) and needed some re-masking and touch ups to straighten the frames afterwards, but the cockpit parts are lovely and weren't too hard to add:

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I ditched the resin pylons since the fit to the wing was poor and grafted the plastic pylons to the resin rails. I also left off the sway braces (?) since I couldn't see a good way to fit them.

Painted with Alclad, not sealed (except for a bit of Klear Flat over the decals) and weathered gently with - wait for it - MIG pigments and MIG washes. Oh dear...

I think this is the first 1/72 plane I've finished since I was a kid. I'm surprised at how small it is, and it was quite difficult in places (I did a poor job on the antenna and had some decal trauma) but it looks nice in the pictures. And you can easily frame things so that you can't see the edges, which is more than I can say for my larger models.

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The last picture is on the base I made for my Tu-160 last year, but it seems to fit nicely!

(Edit: forgot to add that there's a build thread on Britmodeller)

Thanks for looking, I hope you like it!

Cheers,

Will

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Model itself is very beuatiful!

My only comment is on the title, from purist point of view, this aircraft was never in Czech service, but in Czechoslovakian service. Separate Czech Air Force exists since 1993, after dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Even we Czechs often tend to call Czechoslovakian stuff just "Czech" now, which might seem little rude to Slovaks.

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Thanks for the kind comments!

My only comment is on the title, from purist point of view, this aircraft was never in Czech service, but in Czechoslovakian service. Separate Czech Air Force exists since 1993, after dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Even we Czechs often tend to call Czechoslovakian stuff just "Czech" now, which might seem little rude to Slovaks.

This is an excellent point, Czech/Czechoslovak tend to be confused in English and I hadn't thought about the timing of the dissolution which as you say is long after the MiG-15 left service. Eduard did get this right on the box!

I will ask my Slovak friend what he thinks, and change the thread title. I should re-do the images too really.

Thanks again for pointing this out.

Will

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Thanks folks, I liked this scheme because I got to use the rockets, and it does have lots of colourful touches. The yellow is decanted Camel Yellow, the green is a random mix of Tamiya paints (pretty sure cockpit green was in there) as is the khaki, and the red-brown for the rails is mixed from GW Mechrite Red and Vomit Brown.

I fixed the text in the images, I thought it would mess with the composition but I actually like it more this way.

Cheers,

Will

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Hi Will:

Congratulations, You have done an excelent work with this little plane, is a dream of build, and the way you did your article is very valuable for prospective customers who will want to acquiere this little gem.

Thank you very much for sharing,

Cheers,

Luis Alfonso

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Thanks for the kind comments, and for reminding me I forgot to add a link to the build thread in the original post - now edited.

I thought that this was a nice kit - good fit, bit complicated in places, most problems were of my own making. I think the biggest issue which was down to kit parts was the not-great fit of the wing halves (maybe I didn't clean the insides properly, but I think I did) and the very tight join at the wing roots which needed sanding and re-scribing.

I would be very interested to build the revised version and see what changed! Maybe I'll pick up the weekend boxing at some point...

Cheers,

Will

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