This is my first
article on ARC although I have been a regular visitor to ARC. This
MiG 23S was built by me nearly 10 years ago and in it’s original form, was
totally inaccurate, especially the nose profile, which bore NO resemblance to the
real thing. Three years ago I bought an after-market version from Kazan to
convert the MiG-23S to a “MLD”
This was a good and
highly detailed product with one flaw :- the nose cone was again too small in
diameter. All MiG-23 versions after the ‘S’ had a larger and deeper nose
profile, thus the profile from Kazan was wrong (this could be because to fit a
larger diameter nose cone, Kazan would have to supply a new nose section entirely
and they really need to work on the clarity of the transparency –it’s really
sad ).
Click on
images below to see larger images
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Anyway, I cut the
nose section from just in front of the cockpit shroud and fitted a turned piece
of plastic in its place which was of the correct diameter. This wasn’t
easy as the cutting and rebuilding was done to a finished model!
After sanding and
crazy-glue filling till my fingers wore out, it did finally worked, as you can
see from the photos. It also entailed cutting the tail and replacing it
with the ‘MLD’ tail and other parts (too many to mention here) and fitting
the excellent cockpit. The airbrushing was tricky as the old paint scheme
had to be finely sanded down so that there would be no thickness difference
between the old and new paint layers.
The decals are bad
as they developed cracks pretty soon after application, but it was impossible to
change them as it would mean repainting the kit a THIRD time!
Hope you like the
finished product.
Mukund
Click on
images below to see larger images
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