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MiG21-RF Egyptian Airforce


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In case my GB MiG-19S turns into a battle of epic proportions, I'm also going to build the Fujimi MiG-21RF with all the Quickboost resin correction parts: Air Scoops, Corrected Ventral Fin, Stabilizers, Spine & Tail and the Air Intakes. These really do improve the overall kit and as far as I'm concerned still make this better than the more recent Zevzda offerings. Now what's totally missing from the Fujimi kit is the proper Reconnaissance pods for the wing tips and a need to replace the generic under fuselage pod and canopy. Welcome to the Pavla set which deals with all of these issues.

At the moment I'm looking at using the kit decals unless I can find some others in my stash under the other stash of decals at the back of the larger stash of other decals... and so on. I've tried doing this kit before in the Egyptian wavy scheme and made a complete hash of it, so this will be interesting for me.

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Edited by Louise
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Yesterday I assembled the cockpit, exhaust, wings and glued the fuselage together after putting 5g of weight in the nose. Undercarriage legs and internal surfaces painted and weathered in grey. The biggest job so far was removing the Quickboost resin spine/tail from the casting block. When compared to the kit part (which is not correct by any stretch of the imagination for either the MF or RF) the replacements show their worth. I've not used the Pavla RF resin set before. The casting quality on my set is not the best compared to other Pavla castings; will be fine under a camo scheme. What Pavla don't provide is any info or drawings of where these parts go. Luckily I've a horde of MiG21 books as this is one of my all time favorite a/c. Currently trying to find a picture/info of an Egyptian RF so I know which under fuselage pod to use; Pavla provide two different types. The wing tip pods are essential..... how could Fujimi not include these in the kit?

Cockpit details are the kit's decals and the ejector seat is a resin replacement.

migseat.jpgmigcockpit2.jpgmigcockpit.jpg

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mig21struts.jpg

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Yesterday I assembled the cockpit, exhaust, wings and glued the fuselage together after putting 5g of weight in the nose. Undercarriage legs and internal surfaces painted and weathered in grey. The biggest job so far was removing the Quickboost resin spine/tail from the casting block. When compared to the kit part (which is not correct by any stretch of the imagination for either the MF or RF) the replacements show their worth. I've not used the Pavla RF resin set before. The casting quality on my set is not the best compared to other Pavla castings; will be fine under a camo scheme. What Pavla don't provide is any info or drawings of where these parts go. Luckily I've a horde of MiG21 books as this is one of my all time favorite a/c. Currently trying to find a picture/info of an Egyptian RF so I know which under fuselage pod to use; Pavla provide two different types. The wing tip pods are essential..... how could Fujimi not include these in the kit?

Hi Louise,

At a quick guess I'd say go for the 'D' pod which I believe is the daylight/optical pod, ....However I could be wrong :-)

Regards Simon

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That cockpit looks very smart, I take it the decals are all individual?

Each console is one separate decal. As the kits parts are all raised, I just sliced the decals into smaller bits and dowsed everything with Micro Set, which settled everything down over those raised details nicely.

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Hi Louise,

At a quick guess I'd say go for the 'D' pod which I believe is the daylight/optical pod, ....However I could be wrong :-)

Regards Simon

Yes but it's a little more complicated! The Fujimi text states that the RF was a remodeled MF and the drawing in Gerard Paloque "MiG-21 Fishbed 1955-2000", p13 shows the MF spine/tail and states it's all based on MiG21-PF.

The recognized expert in the field, Yefim Gordon, in his book "Famous Russian Aircraft MiG-21" adds much more information, though I'm finding it a bit contradictory. Reference Gordon's book, then Egypt's MiG-21R received local upgrades..."the cameras were permanently installed in the shallow canoe fairing with camera ports aft of the nose gear unit...... The modified a/c bore unofficial local designation MiG21-RF". So it's actually a MiG-21R. Later in the book Gordon states that the official MiG-21 Rf was an R retro fitted with an engine similar to the MF.

The MiG21-R is a development of the PF, with a different spine (more like you'd see on the S or M) but for sake of modeling I'm thinking looks like the MF Quickboost supplies. Regardless, you can't actually build an RF or R with this Fujimi kit. Fujimi are supplying a mis-matched MF/Bis that's missing R or RF camera fairings.

I'm going to call mine an R as I have the D pod, wing fairings and dont' have to scratch build the “behind the nose wheel” camera fairing. Gordon has a color profile of an Egyptian R for me to copy..... what's funny is the color profile above this shows an MF and looks like the R.

Confused...yep. Thank goodness this is just a hobby. Oh, the Egyptian R and RF all had periscopes on the canopy hoods which means the Pavla vac-form canopy can't be used.

Edited by Louise
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OMG what a night mare :), so let me get this straight

PF turns into MF which turns into R (aka RF) but also an RF if it has the MF engine

Paloque shows the R with the MF spine ( as per QBoost) so what about the tail? :)

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OMG what a night mare :), so let me get this straight

PF turns into MF which turns into R (aka RF) but also an RF if it has the MF engine

Paloque shows the R with the MF spine ( as per QBoost) so what about the tail? :)

Ergh, kinda yes and no. At the end of the day the QBoost spine/tail is correct for the MF. Fujimi provide a mismatched Bis tail and MF type spine. As it happens the Qboost MF spine/tail just so happens to look very much like the spine/tail on the R and RF (late versions). Gordon has drawings that show this, while Paloque's is the MF. To clarify what I understand, the MF spine/tail fairing goes past the 2nd vertical panel line before blending into the tail surface (Gordon, Plaque, Qboost) while on the RF, this blending occurs before the 2nd vertical panel line. On that point I can +ve say that you can't build the R/RF model with this kit and Qboost MF spine/tail but it's very very close and much better than the kit parts which look nothing like it.

I saw a few online discussions about MiG21 designations, confusions etc etc and it is probably best to just stop this thread! I'm only going by the evidence provided by my source books here to make the kit a little more like the prototype within the constrains of the plastic/resin available on the market. The kit OOB is a hybrid MF/Bis with lots of shape/contour issues, but makes an easy and fine looking model MiG21.

Can I continue building my hybrid PF/R/RF/MF now or do I have to change the heading of this kit build? :analintruder:

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Can I continue building my hybrid PF/R/RF/MF now or do I have to change the heading of this kit build? :analintruder:

Yes please do !.....always interested to see 'Fishbeds'

Regards Simon

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Can I continue building my hybrid PF/R/RF/MF now or do I have to change the heading of this kit build? :analintruder:

I think we should continue with your current heading, we wouldn't want to cause any confusion! :) But thanks for the explanation, Im now a tiny bit wiser, (not that anyone will notice) :)

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This build is fast nearing completion as these kits always do. Such a fine fit, most of the work is adding Weldbond white glue to fill the gaps between the replacement resin components and the fuselage. While everything is curing tonight, the next stage will be to clean the surface and prep for painting.

So she now sports all new resin air scoops, vent fairings, camera pods on fuselage center line and wing tips, new spine, tail and ventral fin, new horizontal stabilizer mountings (the stabilizers I'll leave off until painting). There's also the resin nose cone, which slips in after painting. I'll get around to posting some color profiles of the R, RF to show what the diff bits are on Wednesday. I'm going to have to fabricate some Arabic numerals for my model too. What Fujimi also don't mention about the Egyptian R/RF is that they carried the large fuel pods on the outer wing mountings, while the inner mountings had weapons. The instructions don't tell you to open up the holes or use these components. I do need to lighten the internal airframe areas as the gray is too dark.

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DSC02186.jpg -- DSC02187.jpg

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Here's a couple of low resolution color profiles from Gordon's book showing the Egyptian MF, R and RF. I highly suggest buying this excellent book if you like MiG-21's. Anyway, I'm going to do the R shown. Check the details of the RF and also note that this particular set of drawings would suggest the R/RF is very much like the MF in shape and profile, just the curve on the R/RF spine is more pronounced than the MF as it's based more on the PF.

R.jpg

MF-R.jpg

My model is primed today and I've sprayed the exhaust panels, nothing else, so no photies yet.

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Yesterday was "paint a model day", a new holiday made Law by the Obama Administration to take our minds off the impending financial doom just round the corner (again). So onward with gusto, the MiG21 hit the paint booth.

No pre-shading. The exhaust area was painted earlier (Alcad dark and light aluminum followed by burnt metal), now masked off. The radar sections were painted Tamiya flat green and masked. A couple of thin coats of Tamiya light blue for the undersurface (I used Testor's acrylic thinner for the first time as Tamiya's seems to be permanently unavailable), mixed 50:50, then adding a few drops of flat earth to do some panel lines, and areas where sand and grime would collect.

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I then moved on to Vallejo's Air Range as I really like the way this sprays. You don't need to thin these but I did using the same Testor's thinner above, but just 10% or even a little less. I sprayed freehand the entire upper surfaces having a soft edge between the blue at 15 psi with desert sand. This was followed by the "camo green" 72019, not the much darker same titled "camo green" #18. Again this was freehand. I removed all the masking save for the canopy. I've to go over the green again as a few areas need a little more opacity. Overall though it's going well.

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Once the green is touched up, I'll shoot a thin blend of sand or middle stone with grey to tone the panels. As the green would have been sprayed over the sand then this, faded would take on the sand colour. This a/c was provided by the Soviets to the Egyptian's and bears the Soviet camo style. The profile I'd shown in earlier threads only has the one side shown, so I used full profiles of similar a/c to add the green splotches. Luckily I don't have to deal with the greenish/grey swirls the Egyptians liked to use!

I also found that a company called Archer produces dry transfers of Arabic numerals for us modelers, so I've ordered a sheet of them.

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Happy having this finished and in the display cabinet to never be seen again like everything else...lol... After decals, the whole a/c was toned down with light coats of sand weathering, and if you've read my RAAF Spit Vc thread, not one blasted micro lt of Future got anywhere near this plane. I used some 10 thou brass rod for the aerials on the tail and nose. I did not do this for the wing and horizontal stabilizers, as they would need to be much thinner. In the past I have used invisible thread for them but always end up losing them (that really doesn't or isn't meant to sound as stupid as it does).

The R didn't have such a large starboard pitot tube on the nose, so I used a brass spare I had which is much smaller in profile. The lens on the camera pod are self adhesive vinyl.

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Very interesting and useful topic, Louise.

I did know about QB sets in 1/48 for the MF, but didn't know that they produced also some for 1/72.

I see that in the end you decide not to use the QB air intake you talk about in your first post?

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Very interesting and useful topic, Louise.

I did know about QB sets in 1/48 for the MF, but didn't know that they produced also some for 1/72.

I see that in the end you decide not to use the QB air intake you talk about in your first post?

That is the QB air intake installed in the retracted position for sub-sonic speed. It is quite a different profile to the kit's item.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Lovely little jet!! I really like the paintjob, & have taken note of all the corrections needed for when (if??!!) I get to start mine!

Here's a couple of low resolution color profiles from Gordon's book showing the Egyptian MF, R and RF. I highly suggest buying this excellent book if you like MiG-21's.

I'm no expert on Fishbeds, but there's a number of posts on the UKAR forum by someone who I think is (he's apparently ex Warpac Mig groundcrew) - he states this is possibly one of Gordon's worst books in that there are a fair number of errors & omissions in it - & apparently photoshopped photos of aircraft purporting to be from one Air Force that are actually from quite a different one (IIRC one of the doctored photos was either taken by the poster or a friend of his). Just passing on something I've read as a 'heads-up', no personal knowledge myself, so don't shoot the messenger....!!

K

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