The
Mig 21 has widely been reported as the most produced jet aircraft in history,
it’s a wonder that the model companies have not until now produced this
important jet in 1/32 scale to modern standards. The aircraft could take up
several volumes of text alone to describe the aircraft so I will not attempt
to do it justice here. Trumpeter /Wasan Model Company have only recently
graced our shores with their wares and I for
one am
grateful for their input into the market. Every model in
their 1/32 scale range has shown an improvement over the previous releases and
this is no exception.
Reviewed
here is the MiG 21 UM Mongol. The rather large box is full of parts and there
are a lot of goodies within. The contents are made in the familiar grey
plastic, on 8 sprues. The other is a clear plastic canopy and lights which
comes in a separate plastic container. Also cast metal landing gear and nose
cone and rubber tyres. To top this little lot off is two large sheets of
decals and a small acetate sheet with all of the instruments on.
Construction
follows the usual sequence starting with the cockpit. The instrument panels
are made from sandwiching acetate sheet (which needs the back painted white)
and plastic front faces. The faces are cast in such a way that the instruments
will be seen when assembled. Each of the KM1 ejector seats is made from 10
parts. You will also have the choice of inhabiting your cockpit with the
single pilot provided. The whole cockpit builds easily and only needs good
painting. You will get a reasonable cockpit from the box but a vast
improvement would be made by substituting the seats with after market ones.
The
following sections are devoted to the complete engine and I found this
construction to be a little too complicated to warrant the required effort to
display the finished part. You will however need to build the exhaust in order
to have a full length afterburner tube.
Section
9 is the beginning to the undercarriage and this is the first opportunity to
use the metal parts. I like the idea of this technique and it works well in
practice by giving inherent strength to a normally weak point in these large
scale models. I personally found I couldn’t get enough torque by simply
screwing the self tapping screws .I took the chance and tightened them up with
a large pair of pliers until I could do them up no more. I then unscrewed them
a quarter turn in order to give the wheels the chance to turn.
The
main gear is not too well illustrated in the instructions and I found that I
needed to refer to some good reference. In particular the attachment of part
C5 and C6 caused some head scratching. It is now that you get the chance of
assembling the fuselage and I needed to use lots of superglue here as there
are so many items trapped between the halves.
The
cockpit is a very tight fit and I ended up trimming some of the rear bulkhead
to get it to fit. At this point I would suggest that you take the chance to
add the metal nose cone, this will give essential nose weight without the need
to find room for some lead in the tight confines of the fuselage. The metal
nose cone also gives the brittle point the strength that is needed instead of
having it blunted by general handling as the plastic substitute did.
The
wings build up very quickly and you will have the option of positional flying
surfaces. In section fifteen I would suggest a word of caution as I found that
the right (Starboard) wing sits slightly lower that the Port wing and this is
only noticeable once the wing is joined and viewed from the nose. Careful
aligning would help but raising the port wing leading edge by about 1mm would
be better. This problem was found to be in other kits so it appears to
be a flaw in the masters, having spoken to a friend who has built the same kit
he had the same problem too.
Part
E19 the front avionics coaming needs some sanding to fit and this will require
some careful re-scribing of the lost detail. The main gear is next and once
again as before the main components is metal with plastic attachments. I found
here that the positive mounting points were a great help when setting the
gear. Section 18 dealt with the lower fuselage and I found that the main
airbrake sections were awkward to fit especially E18 as the engine was in the
way if you want to adjust the fit from the insides. The actual rear airbrake
was a poor fit and needed some refinement and sanding to get it to fit.
The
rear fuselage is next and here I found the biggest problems. The rear ring was
a poor fit and needed some extensive refining to fit correctly. With the rest
of the tail section constructed with its pose able flying surfaces the fin is
added. Here you will have an important choice to make as there is an option to
have the
Para
brake housing open.
Moving
rapidly on the rear and forward fuselage sections are bought together. The
join was in need of a lot of sanding and filling to get it to fit. This
section of the instructions also gives you options of a rear fuselage removal
trolley, Ladder and canopies. The two final sections of constructions are for
the R3S missiles and the under fuselage fuel tank. I found the shape of the
fuel tank to be a little suspect and I think with some shortening of the front
part a reasonable representation can be made.
Colour
and marking is now in order and there are several choices to be made. First is
the colourful model as seen on the Box art being the Czech “Stress Team”
markings. Second is a standard Czech bird and finally there is a Finish
example I chose the extravagant “Stress Team” markings and after
consulting my references I found that there was several discrepancies in the
instructions. Namely the demarcation between the blue and the grey under the
rear fuselage and also from what I can ascertain the upper wing colour needs
to wrap around the leading edge a bit.
Once
painted, I found that there was another area which needed to be adapted before
decals. The upper wings have a dark brown sprayed pattern that follows the
panel lines and these are quite noticeable in photos of the real thing. Once I
was ready to decal the model I used a mix of the kit decals and some from the
TIGER WINGS set for the same aircraft. Some of the colours are suspect in both
sets of decals and I found that some of the sizing of the decals was also in
question. Quite a decaling marathon followed and the end results are quite
pleasing, the kit decals adhere well, are thin and conform well to some of the
often difficult shapes.
Accuracy
wise I would say that it looks like the MIG 21 and that is good enough for me,
I am sure there will be rivet counters out there who will criticize because it
is 1mm too long or some other trivial matter but if they are comparing to
plans then are the plans accurate?
In
conclusion I would say that this is a better offering than the Revell MiG 21
in this scale but it is not for the feint hearted. Some work will be required
to get a good result but the final product is well produced. The moulds are
made in such a way that there are options available for several of the 21
family and these are probably all available by the time you read this (read
HERE
- Ed.).
Well
done to Trumpeter. At its current market value I think it represents good
value for money.
John
Wilkes
