Mig-17 matching after-market decals to suitable 1/72 kit

[KRK4m]

On 1/24/2017 at 7:23 PM, Jacarre said:

 Thanks a lot Michael! The vertical stabilizer's and wing chords are ok the same that fuselage width/heigth and rear fuselage lenght?

Regards.,

Javier

I don't know whether I have understood your question correctly, but today (thanks to Messrs Zvezda) I can measure the Dragon MiG-17 kit too.

So the distance from the 13th fuselage frame and air intake front lip (extreme front fuselage) measures 57.0mm that is almost spot-on (should be 56.7).

The fuselage behind the 13th frame (including vertical tail) should be 98.2mm long with Zvezda kit (measuring 92.5mm) being almost 6mm too short.

The wings are 3mm too short in span each, which combined with 3mm too slim fuselage makes wingspan 9mm too short - massacre!

Moreover the wing chord is too small 2mm at the root and some 1.5mm at the wingtips - allthough both the sweep angle and the distances between fences are correct.

Tha tailplane span (overall) is 3mm too short, the chord (at the root) is 1.5mm too short, the tail fin is too short in both vertical (2mm) and chord (3mm at the root) dimensions.

But the worst of all is the fuselage diameter - at the 13th fuselage frame it should be exactly 150cm (20.8 scale mm) with Eduard MiG-15 featuring 20.5 and AZ MiG-17 with 21.0 both very close.

Here the Dragon/Zvezda with their 18.0mm is horribly too slim and impossible to correct.

Cheers

Michael 

 

[Wulfman]

My head hurts !

 

Wulfman

[Ruslan.P]

Good day! Can you renew link on blueprints?

[WARDOG]

A VERY good forum here with lots of GREAT info!

 

In spite of it all, I guess I will still just use my old KP kit with the Carpena decals "F" nose, and maybe bash-on some Hasegawa main wheels and possibly, fuel tanks.  It's "The bird in hand syndrome"!

 

Now, all I need is a set of Madagascar decals!  (Prematurely gave mine away years ago!).

 

Cheers,

 

WARDOG

[Ruslan.P]

On 15/01/2017 at 18:22, KRK4m said:

Some 30 years ago, when I was heading the Polish Aviation Museum at Krakow, the well-known Polish researcher and modeller Marian Gibas asked me about the possibility of making definitive scale drawings of MiG-15 and -17 using the plethora of specimen (Soviet-, Czech- and Polish-built) kept within the museum collection. At last I managed to contact him and here are the results. The drawings are scanned from the originals (1:24) scaled to 1:72nd scale. If you copy and print them in this size they should be exactly 1:72 (MiG-15 span and length should be 140 mm, MiG-17F length should be 154 mm and wing span 134 mm). 

 

 

Putting the Eduard MiG-15 against these drawings show only one minor fault - the MiG-15bis (i.e. later ones, finned, not flush-fitting) underwing fuel tanks are just 5% undersized. I had not measured Airfix ones, but these offered by Hobby Boss do fit spot-on.

Unfortunately I don't have the Dragon/Italeri MiG-17 in my stash*, but the AZ MiG-17F looks decent. The only faults are: fuselage 3mm too long (forward of the split frame it should be identical to MiG-15, here it's 2mm too long between the canopy tail and the split frame and 1 mm between the split frame and fin leading edge), too pointed wing trailing edge outer ends (the radius of curvature is too small, you can correct it with a file), opposite fault at tailplane trailing edge outer end (here the radius is too big, they should be more pointed, but I can live with this) and (AGAIN :)) undersized auxiliary fuel tanks. Both wing and tailplane (span, sweep, chord and area-wise) are correct.

Note that MiG-17F and -17PF do differ not only in front fuselage and windshield area. Also the fin panelling and rear underfuselage keel are different.

In my opinion the drawings linked by Aardvark show MiG-17 fin height being identical to MiG-15. In reality - although having the same sweep (a fact that most MiG-15 kit manufacturers had ignored in the past) - they do differ 95 mm in height above the tailplane.

Cheers

Michael

 

* look at the 2019 posts down in the same topic

I find this blueprints on MiG-17, but in MiG-15 many mistakes. Very many

[KRK4m]

Some time ago I pointed out to our friends from AZ a kind of "freedom" in the approach to historical truth in the profiles on their kit boxes.

First on one Curtiss H75 they located a large French city in Africa, then on a Cessna 180 they moved an American hospital from Krakow to Warsaw, for the Albatross C.III they created an airfield in a non-existent town, but they outdid themselves in Mig-17s. They described the museum exhibit from Kiev as Fresco C in the 1950s camouflage, while it is Fresco A in the 1970s scheme. And on the cover of their #7329 kit there is a Polish Lim-5 #1023 in three-colour camouflage, while this plane (for 35 years an exhibit of the Aviation Museum in Krakow) I personally picked up from the unit in four-color camouflage (two greens, tan and grey). A few days ago, I accidentally found a photo of this a/c on the web, which I am attaching.

 

 

I think everyone can see that while both grey areas of the fuselage (nose and tail end) are identical, as well as both tan areas (on the centre fuselage and close to the tailpipe), the dark olive green in the cockpit area has nothing to do with forest green around the insignia.

From the modeling point of view, it is an outstanding rarity, because the vast majority of Polish Lims (Mig-15/17s) flew in two-colour camouflage, and three-colour scheme was not very often seen. So what could be said about four colours !

Cheers

Michael

Edited December 24, 2022 by KRK4m

[KRK4m]

11 hours ago, KRK4m said:

Doubled post - sorry

Cheers

Michael

 

Edited December 24, 2022 by KRK4m
as explained