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Hi all, I’ve mentioned her in a number of posts as a parallel to my many Mustangs and finally I have got her to the RFI stage 😊. It hasn’t been through any difficulty - although I had a couple of accidents - but simply because I built up too much of a pipeline of builds, with four or five models sitting part built. As a result, my enthusiasm waned for this and a couple of others, sadly. Anyway, enough of all that, here she is. As you can see, she is a UTI MiG-15 “NATO: Midget” (CS-102?) as operated by the Force Aerienne de la Republique du Mali (the Mali Air Force). Reports state that she was the only one delivered as part of the Mali MiG-17F acquisition in the mid/late-1960s. The UTI (probably Czech-built), which seems to have arrived in the early 1970s, and the Frescos equipped the Escadrille de Chasse (Fighter Squadron) based at Senou Air Base, Bamako. Eventually this fleet was replaced by the MiG-21bis/UMs and they were all put out to “grass” (more like sand) at Severe Air base, near Mopti in the early 1990s. With reports of only one UTI delivery it seems that “TZ-366” still survives as a gate guard at Senou, now marked "TZ-001" I built her straight out of the box apart from the decals. I elected to guess how she was when operational. She was a pleasure to build, despite the multitude of small parts to remember and then install! In the process of getting her to together I forgot the nose weight and despite dripping in as many small fishing weights as I could after fuselage assembly she still sits on her tail. I have therefore had to resort to a rod support. I opted for Blue Rider Bolivian decals as they were much better than the kit offerings that I had from the old AZ MiG-17F kit. The tail roundel, however, needed some surgery as the green centre was proportionally larger on the real aircraft (see below). I therefore used the centres from larger roundels and overlaid them. The paints are a complete guess. I trawled paint charts and finally decided on a mix of Colourcoats, which gave me (I feel) the right balance of colour. (Credit: Jacques Guillem) So, what did I use? Well: 1. Kit – Eduard UTI MiG-15 (Profipack 7705) 1/72 2. Decals – Blue Rider Bolivian roundels from the Chaco War set, stencils from the ArmyCast set and home printed serial adapted from the AZ MiG-17F decals. 3. Paints (all enamels) – Colourcoats Pale Blue Grey (ACSM01), LVA Camouflage Beige Sand (ACD03), KLu Whisky Four Aquablauw (ACD09), Gris Blue Fonce (ACF05), and MiG cockpit blue mixed with greys, plus Humbrol Silver (11) and a variety of other Humbrol enamels. Finished with Humbrol Satincote. 4. Weathering and Washes – Flory Sand, Prismacolor Silver pencil and Tamiya Weathering Powders. 5. Aftermarket – Uschi standard line for the wire aerial I hope you like her. Martin