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MiG 23MF LSK/NVA (East German AF)


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For this GB I will be hopefully be building a MiG 23MF of the now defunct East German Air Force using the KP (RV Resin) kit. The East German AF initially got a reported total of 45 MiG 23 MFs in 1978 serving with JG-9 at Peenemunde. A further 30 MiG 23MLs were received from 1985 supplanting but never totally replacing the MF version. The aircraft I am modelling is one of those that survived to the end of the East German AF in 1990. As the kit comes with no armament I will try and get some from elsewhere.

Any comments are very welcome.

The Kit.

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The Instructions.

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The Decals.

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And finally some help.

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Just to say that I have a couple of rather clunky R60/AA-8 Aphids (or so I am told!), going spare from my Revell Frogfoot build. Not sure if these are of interest, or even appropriate, but they are here if you would like them (plus some ground attack stuff too).

I won't be offended if you say no :winkgrin:

Cliff

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  • 2 weeks later...

I have done a small amount of work on this one. I have managed to get the rear fuselage and wings together, and the fwd fuselage. As with most eastern European kits there were no location pins on the fuselage parts. I did place a couple of pieces of plasti-card on the rear fuselage, but still got a slight mismatch around the engine fitting. I also had few slight problems with the fwd fuselage, in that I fitted the nose UC bay and then the cockpit area. But when I looked through the rear of the fwd fuselage whilst doing some test fitting I saw that the U/C bay was slanted, so I removed it and re-stuck it in a better position. I will hopefully get these two parts stuck together in the next day or so.

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Just to say that I have a couple of rather clunky R60/AA-8 Aphids (or so I am told!), going spare from my Revell Frogfoot build. Not sure if these are of interest, or even appropriate, but they are here if you would like them (plus some ground attack stuff too).

I won't be offended if you say no :winkgrin:

Cliff

Thanks I might require these as I cannot find any at the moment. I will let you know a bit later if I do require them.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I have not been doing much to this one as I have been concentrating on my Helicopter GB entry. I have managed to get most of the main parts together and filled a lot of it in. One of the bigger problems that I had was the placement of the tailplanes, as I think that I removed the smallish stubs that were for them when I sanded down the fuselage. Still I have got these attached and I will start to rub the filler down this week. One thing that I still have to fit before the radome is the fixed parts of the ventral folding fin. I have fitted the rear part, but I have yet to fit the fwd part. I have also left the radome off at the moment so that I can fill it with weight if required.

Any comments are welcome.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I now have the main parts altogether now and finally sanded down. This took a bit longer than I anticipated due to a few trouble spots. I have also added to gun behind the nose U/C, and will soon be adding the weapons pylons, which although included in the kit are not mentioned in the instructions. I have also had a bit of bother with the port wing, in that when I folded it back into the fuselage the wing glove beside it would split. I tried several times to glue it close, but it kept on splitting. In the end I fixed with some super glue and baking powder, but this now means when the wing is unfolded it droops a lot more than the STBD wing. Luckily when the MiGs have landed the wings are folded back as soon as they leave the runway to save space in the operating pan. More progress soon.

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  • 3 weeks later...

I have finally got some paint on this one, after a few days struggling to get the canopy fitted. Either I have got the fuselage slightly wider than it should be when I glued the fwd parts together or the canopy is narrower than the fuselage and meant to be placed in the open position, I am not sure. The main reason I wanted the canopy closed is that the detail inside the cockpit is not that great and is best seen through the close canopy. I have painted the underneath and applied the lighter green to the topside. I will be painting the darker green and brown later in the week. More updates to follow.

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All the decals are now on, including some in strange places such as the main U/C bays. Some of the stencil decals were destroyed during the application, but luckily the sheet does have some extras, although for one decal there were a few short. Anyhow I will start to add some of the smaller parts and decide on what, if any weapons will be fitted.

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Nice work Jabba and, as modelling minion says, the East German markings do bring the colour scheme to life.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks for your kind comments.

Starting on the final push now. I have managed to fit the U/C doors and a few other parts. I have also come across another slight problem with this kit over the RV kit that it is produced from by KP, in that the RV kit has some smaller parts in resin and etched brass which this kit now does not have. I also had a bit of fun with the nose U/C mudguard, in that the gap for the wheels is too small for it to fit. I did try shaving it down but to no avail, so in the end I split it in two and fitted the individual parts to each wheel. I will fill in the gap so that it looks like one part. I have managed to get a few of these parts such a the data probe by the Fwd windscreen from other Russian aircraft kits in the stash. I have also found some armament from various sources, the AA-7Apex from a Dragon weapons set, the R-60 Aphid launchers from the Trumpeter Su-24 kit that I am making at the moment ( will not be required for my build) and an Eduard Brassin MiG-29 weapons set for the R-60s. Hopefully I will finish before this weekend. I also had a bit of fun with Photobucket to get these photos, anything better than them as I now have had enough with them.

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AA-7 missiles.

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R-60 twin launchers.

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Eduard Brassin weapons set.

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Edited by Jabba
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Always liked the looks of the MiG 23. Nice work!

i have one of the RV ones. The thing that worries me is all that seem filling and sanding vs. all the fine surface detail... How did that go for you?

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Unfortunately all the fine detail that was close to joint lines that had to be filled in is now gone. The detail is so subtle that I could not see it after sanding to even try and restore it, so it was left as it is. It really is a pity as the detail is very extensive

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  • 2 weeks later...

All finished now. The decal striping on the Dragon missiles were a bit thicker than I would of liked, but beggars can't be choosers. I did not add the Eduard decals as I think that they would not really show up as they were that small, and I would have probably lost too many of them when applying them.

Any comments are very welcome.

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Edited by Jabba
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