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Hello! In this article I would like to describe the build of the Clear Prop 1/72 Mig-23 MLA model (CPA72030). You can find detailed photos of the kit contents on the manufacturer's website here. A few words about the model. The basic kit includes: Sprues of the model with highly detailed surface. Pane lines are clear, thin and neat. The riveting is imitated well. Sprues with armament, for nearly all underwing combinations available for Mig-23MLA; Transparent elements sprue. The canopy is given in two versions - separate for the open cockpit option and one-piece, if the cockpit is closed. Two photo-etched panels, one for the model and the other for R-60 rockets. Decal is made by silkscreen printing method. It consists of four sheets: technical stencils of the aircraft, pylons, armament, and identification marks for 4 variants (two Czech, one Soviet, one GDR). The decal has a thin lacquer underplayed and works well with fixing fluids. Detailed colour instructions. The model itself has a number of features, which I think it is important to dwell on in detail. The first thing I would like to mention is the wing. As you know, all Mig-23/27 aircraft had a variable sweep wing. Literally all manufacturers of these planes made the wing movable. But Clear Prop has chosen a different approach. The kit allows you to set the wing in one of two wing positions: 16 and 72 degrees. For each wing position there is an individual set of parts covering the hole in the fuselage where the wing fits. This approach provides the best possible match to the prototype and takes into account all the kinematics of wing movement, which is impossible to achieve on a model with a movable wing. This is the only model of this plane for today that offers such precision. Another important advantage of the kit is the duplication of early and late modification of the aircraft, such as the front landing gear strut, rudder, keel fin, front cockpit instrument panel sight. Thus you can select a set of parts to match your chosen prototype exactly. To complement the kit I used the following aftermarket from Clear Prop, designed specifically for this model: Cockpit canopy and Wheel Mask Set CPA72077 Set of landing gear doors CPA72096 Set of wheels + dirt shield on nose strut CPA72079 Set of exhaust nozzle + combustion chamber exterior + external air intakes CPA72080 In addition to the aftermarket from Clear Prop, the following third party aftermarket was used: Nose Pitot tube by Master AM-72-040 Pitot set + antennas + cannon by Mini World A7292 Missile set of AIM-9D ResKit RS72-0233 In order to give a complete picture on aftermarket for this model, I can add that Clear Prop released 2 more sets of add-ons specially for this model, namely a set of cockpit parts + cannon (CPA72098), as well as a set of masks for exterior (CPA72099). However I didn't use them in this build because by the time they were ready I had already finished these stages. I chose Czechoslovakian Air Force (Czechoslovakia) Aircraft No. 4850 as of February 1983 as a prototype. Final photos of the model Building process In the article I will summarize the main stages of the build. If you want to know as much detail as possible, you can go here. Cabin One can assemble a great cabin straight out of the box. Assembly starts with the front instrument panel, which includes PE parts and decals: I hardly refined anything on the instrument panel except for the sight (black panel on top centre). The rest of the cockpit is pretty much untouched except for the space under the front canopy visor. These parts ended up looking as follows: Next, I assembled and installed the seat and also installed the front canopy visor: The final stage included the tilting part of the canopy. Changes here mainly concerned the of the blind screen, I also added a few details: I should note that a set of masks for the canopy makes it much easier to paint it. Nose landing gear niche and strut I made a number of modifications here, which caused me to change the assembly order suggested by the manufacturer. Below are some photos of the process: The nose chassis strut was reworked according to the prototype photos: Main gear niches and struts Out-of-box version of main landing gear niches are quite highly detailed. The left niche in the OOB version may look as follows: Next I made some changes, with the following result: The right OOB niche version may look like this: Here is what we got after the modifications: General view of the main niches: The main landing gear struts and landing gear flaps have undergone a number of refinements: Air intakes The air intakes are in my opinion one of the most difficult steps in the assembly of this model. I recommend to be especially careful when fitting all the parts, and double-check the assembly several steps ahead. To start with I added some of the trim lines, riveting, and holes: Next I advise to paint some elements beforehand, otherwise it will be problematic to paint them later on the assembled model: After that I continued the assembly of all elements of the fuselage, and fixed the air intake. I painted the air intake inside at the final stage with a brush. A distinctive external feature of Mig-23 air intakes is its riveting, which I reproduced on the model. Also it is necessary to add a line of decking on the air intake cowling: The final stage of air intakes included internal imitation of the air intake cowling which I with the help of painted pieces of decals: Wing and tail unit I chose a wing position of 16 degrees. In the process, the wing was further riveted, and a few panel lines and other small elements were added. The fixed part of the wing is one of the challenging stages of assembly. At this stage extra caution is advised as well. General view of the wing and tail unit when assembled: Stabilizer The stabilizer and its base is made in one piece. I have separated them in order to deflect the stabilizer downwards by a small angle - typical parking position. Ventral fin Assembly of the ventral fin is easy, but some additional details are required: Nozzle and heat resistant panels The heat resistant panels should be riveted for better realism. Combustion chamber assembled from plastic parts, PE and parts from the CPA72080 add-on kit. As for the nozzle, its distinctive feature on the Mig-23 is the sagging of the blades in the parking configuration. This is imitated perfectly in the Clear Prop CPA72080 add-on kit. The nozzle from this kit compared to the plastic OOB version is shown below for comparison. Weapon carriage points and pylons The fuel tank is taken from the kit, I just added my own simulation of the outer welds using pulled sprue. I decided to make the following variant of the missile armament. 2 R-60 missiles under the fuselage, assembled from the box with some modifications. R-13M (Soviet copy of the American missile AIM-9D) missile under the fixed part of the wing. The R-13M missile is included in the kit, but I chose to buy AIM-9D missiles by ResKit and use them to make the R-13M missile. I spent a lot of time finalizing the pylons and beams for the missiles. General view of the weapons carriage: Exterior details I imitated a lot of different exterior details throughout the build. Some of them are from the kit, some are scratchbuild, some came from other manufacturers. Painting and filtering The main painting of the model was done with Mr.Color paints and varnishes. Most of the colours are available in their color range, but two camouflage colours have to be mixed independently. The main difficulty of colouring the model was to reproduce the shapes and positions of camouflage spots: Unfortunately, at the stage of colouring I made one mistake in weathering, which was pointed out by my ukrainian colleague Andrey aka palanbor: There was unfortunately no opportunity to correct this mistake. Well, there is probably no such thing as a perfect job. Respect to colleague palanbor for his attentiveness. Other traces of wearing and other artistic methods were carried out with the help of Revell enamel paints, oil paints and Tamiya pigments. Weathering is moderate, as the model was made for the period when the aircraft was just delivered to the troops. Conclusion The new Mig-23 MLA model by Clear Prop is in my opinion the best kit at the moment for this aircraft. The model is complex, aimed at modellers who already have some skills and experience. This project took me approximately 9 months. This time I spent to squeeze the most out of this kit, as well as my skills and capabilities. I would like to thank the team at Clear Prop for giving me the opportunity to work on this project. Moreover, I had the opportunity to start familiarising myself with this model even at the stage of castings testing. I am happy that in the final stage of the pre-production development before I was able to make a small contribution. I would like to thank everyone who supported me during the building of the model. My sincere gratitude to my ukrainian colleague Karpenko Bogdan aka bogdan777 for all information support at all stages of this project. Sincerely, Dmitry Ahopian aka DimaADA

Hi all, I'm planning on building Trumpeter's 1/48 MiG-23ML in a KPAAF scheme soon but specifically as one of the aircraft seen earlier in the year during the parade in celebration of the 90th anniversary of the founding of it's military. Unfortunately the MiG-29's were the star of the show and there's only a few shots of the Flogger. I did manage a screencap though... I noticed the positioning of the aerobatic team decal under the cockpit has pushed the guards insignia(?) back to the intake, and that has pushed the aircraft number to the rear of the fuselage. Would this mean there are no KPAAF roundels on the aircraft at all? As far as I know there are only roundels on the fuselage, not on the wings or tail, as seen below... As hard as I've tried I can only get pictures of the right-hand side of the two Floggers which took part (aircraft's 45 and 22 I believe), but I doubt the aircraft would fly with asymmetrical markings. Super Hobby sell 1/48 scale marking's for KPAAF aircraft which contain everything I'd need, it would just feel a little odd to have no roundels on it. Any ideas?

This one is an old and well known kit of this iconic aircraft.The kit itself is pretty rudimentary.I rescribed the panel lines and made the pittotube out of a hypodermic needle.I also replaced the ejection seat because the one in the kit did not resemble anything remote to a KM-1M.The paints used are tamiya and gunze and the decals came from the spares box. Enjoy the photos,Dragan

Here is my entry to the group build. Fingers crossed for a good result as this is a quite complicated kit for my skill level. 🤞 I am planning to finish the model in Syrian Air Force markings but it will probably just the markings as I don't really care about the accuracy much and have no idea if Syria used this Mig-23 variant or not.

I'm new here at britmodeller and thought that sharing my build here would be a good idea to present myself. My plan is to build a Lybian MIG-23ML using the MF version from trumpeter. To dress it up I have some AM from Eduard and the Aires ML cockpit and master pitot tube. The decals are from Blackbird decals and the individual will be 7202. Hope you like it and feel free to comment to make me feel welcome . Here is some pictures of what I have and what I’m aiming for. And a picture of the real thing: http://www.airliners.net/photo/Libya---Air/Mikoyan-Gurevich-MiG-23ML/1167950/L/&sid=ca905be3598b0a7755b7304bed243f34 Cheers Jakob