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Hello dear friends. I would like to present you my latest aircraft model. Mig-15uti from HobbyBoss in 1/72 scale. This model was built for a group build called Brushes only. So, i painted this model only with brushs. Base coats were painted with acrylics and weathering was applied with oils. I like to built models with unusual markings or painting schemes. So i choosed the Iraqi air force version of the aircraft. Please feel free to criticize. By the way, the cockpit or control panel have no details out of the box. So i tried to add some details from scratch.

Here with my ICM 1/48 MiG-25PD finished as an Iraq Air Force aircraft from 96 Sqn based at Qadessiya Air Base (Al Asad). Some references quote this as the aircraft in which Lt Zuhair Dawood intercepted and shot down the VFA-81 F/A-18C flown by Lt Cdr Scott “Spike” Speicher, who was sadly killed, on the first night of “Desert Storm”, 17 January 1991. Whatever the truth, the model has been build for our club Desert Storm commemoration build. The ICM kit is pretty decent in my opinion with just a few oddities to overcome. The upper/lower wing joint on the underside does not follow any panel lines and I chose to fill and rescribe the area but tbh it is unlikely to be seen. The trickiest joint I found was on the rear fuselage where the large fuselage side panels c/w the fins attaches to the front fuselage - I couldn’t quite get a perfect fit here despite much fettling. This area is also partly natural metal on most MiG-25s too so it took some time to get an acceptable result. Although the kit cockpit is pretty good, I chose to use parts of the Eduard set designed for the kit, mainly to enhance the rather prominent open canopy. I did also add some scratch built bits to the open canopy to represent the canopy curtain and the area behind. I struggled to find a MiG cockpit green colour which matched the Eduard parts and in truth, the Eduard parts didn’t look too much like any of the pictures of Foxbat cockpits I could find so I wound up using Mr Paint MRP-001 “Russian Cockpit Turquoise” and painstakingly hand painted the eduard parts to match. I also used a Resin seat (Can’t remember whose). Other aftermarket parts used were a Master pitot and Reskit exhausts. The latter I had mixed feelings about. They certainly improve the detail around the rear end of the fuselage but the exhaust petals themselves look really quite rough. The kit missiles are OK but lack a little finesse. I started to try to thin the missile fins and tidy them up but ultimately bought PlusModel replacements. These I found really tricky to assemble and paint, especially the front fins which are extremely delicate so you pays your money and makes your choice. If I build another - it will be a recce bird with no missiles! I removed the moulded “Odd Rod” IFF aerials on the upper nose and scratchbuilt new ones, replaced the aerial on the upper nose and scratched the aerial on the aircraft spine which is missing from the kit altogether despite being shown on the boxtops! I could only find a few pictures of in-service Iraqi MiG-25s but all of the ones I could find, and the ones taken after the war, often looking in less than tip - top condition, all indicate that they were painted pretty much the same as all the other interceptor Foxbats - light grey. The grey did have a significant blue tint. Unable to obtain any Mr Paint “Traffic Grey” which is probably the right colour, I mixed my own using Mr Hobby H315 and H417. Reading previous builds here on Britmodeller and elsewhere, I found a number of interesting nuances of Iraqi Mig-25s of the era including the Chaff Flare dispensers on the wing fence, which in my case were scratch build using parts from quick boost MiG-23 units, the large RWR bulges on the cheeks of the intakes which are included in the kit, the larger and enhanced flag on the tail courtesy go Begemot decals and the odd looking placement of the wing national markings. All of this information was gleaned from numerous internet searches and books and with thanks in the main to Tom Cooper (Now banned) and Jabba. The kit decals looked oversimplified and of not quite the right colours to me so I substituted Begemot decals and made the serial up from various sources. I also used a large part of the excellent Begemot Mig-25 stencil set although in fact Iraqi Migs had all of the stencilling in English. One other thing I did do was to shorten the main undercarriage legs by about 4 mm to help give the characteristic nose up attitude when the aircraft was on the ground. Finally, I apologise for the quality of the photographs! I can take pictures of the real thing but I’m not so good at taking pictures of models I’m afraid! The pictures actually make the model look cleaner than it does in real life - maybe I will return ad enhance the weathering a little. Enough of my ramblings, here are some pictures. I hope you like. Cheers Malcolm

The Mig-23UB is the two-seater version of the well known Mig-23 and this is the Art Model kit straight from the box in Iraqi Air Force markings. The kit includes decals for 16 different schemes so there's plenty of choice and leftovers for the spares box. Steve