This
is
a Condor kit that I bought on ebay a few years back and finished a
little over a year ago, this was definitely a challenging build as it’s
KP heritage is evident in all parts except for the fuselage halves which
look more like a MiG-21 in my opinion, albeit a BIS with the wider spine.
I tried to reduce the spine’s width by sanding but it was soon obvious
that I’ll run out of plastic before I reach the proper chord. The wheels
are a little smaller in diameter than the real aircraft but I had no
replacements, so I turned a blind eye and used them. The cockpit is quite
sparse as expected, the details were scratch-built
(Seat belts, ejection handle, instrument panel etc.) and the
seat modified to look like the original. The Pitot tube was changed with a
much thinner stock. To convert to an RF version, I
scratch-built the under cockpit camera pod using Milliput and clear
plastic stock.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The
MiG-21RF was only operated by Egypt, as the original Recce pod was removed
from the fuselage hard-point and replaced with an indigenously designed
and built three camera pod that was installed in a fairing that replaced
the gun under the cockpit, this helped counter the GGS (Gas Guzzling
Syndrome) that MiG-21s suffered from, as instead of the original pod an
additional fuel tank was added which when paired the wing tanks provided
notable range enhancement.
This
particular aircraft 8506 was one of three in its unit that were used
throughout the period leading up to the 6th of October (Yom
Kippur) war and also after the Suez Canal crossing for targets’ status
verification.
Hany
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