MIG 15 by Danstream - Trumpeter 1:48 - Finished

[Danstream]

Dear all,

being currently interested about cold war, I am starting a new kit which represents one of the protagonists of cold war, the MiG 15 bis. The story of this plane is quite known, so I am not repeating it here. Quite surprisingly, its jet engine, which was a russian copy of the Rolls-Royce Nene,  was practically simply purchased from UK. It was one of the first operative jet fighter with a swept wing for operating in the high subsonic regime. For this iconic plane, I chosed the 1:48 Trumpeter kit, a brand that I never tried before.

 

 

 

My intention is not to spend too much efforts in detailing the cockpit because this is going to be a closed canopy model. However, when I saw the supplied ejection seat, I was disappointed by how the headrest was reproduced. Being the headrest the most prominent detail that can be seen through a closed canopy, I decided to detailing it a bit.

 

 

Trumpeter moulded a 'boxed' headrest, probably copying one of the restaured MiG flying in US, but the original one was actually quite different. Above, you can see the difference and the little improvements that I made with some Evergreen strips (the kit comes with two seats). To give a little 'busier' look to the cockpit, I also added few wiring along with the engine throttle which cannot be absent in a pilot's office.

 

 

Before a coat of paint, I embellished a bit more the seat adding two side handles which can be well spotted from outside:

 

 

This is my first Soviet aircraft, I know little about russian aircraft, hence I am curious to see how will this one turn out. I hope you will be interested too.

 

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Danstream

[Canute]

Pretty basic a/c, but rugged and extremely tough. Should be a good build to follow.

[Egilman]

That is a Korean War version which would be predominantly bare unpolished aluminum with stainless steel panels..... A very distinctive look.....

 

I'm sure you will do it justice Dan....

 

I'm in.....

[lmagna]

Where did I put my F-86 Sabre?

I'll be off by the side looking on. Don't know much about them other than the one out here where I live is fun to watch in air shows. But If I remember correctly it is a trainer version with a two seat cockpit so it does not look quite the same.

[mtaylor]

28 minutes ago, lmagna said:

Where did I put my F-86 Sabre?

I'll be off by the side looking on. Don't know much about them other than the one out here where I live is fun to watch in air shows. But If I remember correctly it is a trainer version with a two seat cockpit so it does not look quite the same.

 

If that's the one I'm thinking of, it's do a lot of airshows and sometimes with an "adversary" F-86.   The last airshow Medford had there was a dogfight between them.  

[lmagna]

6 minutes ago, mtaylor said:

If that's the one I'm thinking of

I think it is. There can't be too many Mig 15s out here still flying! I wish I had seen the F-86 as well. It is possibly one of my favorite jets.

[Egilman]

11 hours ago, lmagna said:

There can't be too many Mig 15s out here still flying!

51 to be exact 43 of them in the US.... (most are in private hands) Well over 100 on display worldwide....

And the North Korean AF still flies them.... (chuckle)

Edited June 5, 2021 by Egilman

[Danstream]

Thanks for the likes and your notes. It is surprising to learn about how many of them are flying in the US. Surely there are some one-seat specimens flying as I watched them in several videos on youtube. There is at least one where it is flying together with an F-86 (yellow striped). So far, the only opponent I can pose with it is my recent Hawker Sea Fury (although the Dutch markings do not match with it). Yes, rugged and basic aircraft, but quite lethal a weapon for its time.  I was also surprised to note how small it was (likely to contain weight) and how cramped was its cockpit:

 

 

Probably, like the pilot in the videoclip, I wouldn't fit well into it.

 

Best regards,

Dan.

[ccoyle]

I saw the MiG-15 and F-86 demonstration at the Chino airshow back in '98 or '99  (time flies). The F-86 leaves a distinct smoke trail that put it at a disadvantage versus the MiG when it came to who spotted whom first.

[Egilman]

The Mig 15 over Korea was a surprise to US pilots, it was far superior to our F-80's & 84's and anything the Navy had as well... it was smaller faster and more maneuverable.... It's one deficiency was it's armament of 2- 20mm and 1- 30 mm cannon, very effective weapons but minimal ammo loadout... It could not hang in a fight and suffered compressibility problems in a high speed dive.... According to Chuck Yeager, it was a plane you had to pay attention to and stay within it's flight envelope or it would kill you... When Yeager told Russian pilots of his opinions of it, they exclaimed (you dived in it!) they were dumbstruck at why he would risk his life like that...

 

The F-86 was a vast improvement over the F-80's & 84's but still less than what was needed against the Mig 15, so how did the F-86 gain an 8-1 kill ratio against the Mig 15?

 

Superior ACM training... our pilots could fly the F-86 right to the edge of the envelope the Russian pilots (even the aces amongst them) could not... And the air combat tactical doctrines worked out in WWII were still valid.... They knew where the Migs were coming from so they would regularly sweep thru the skies when the bombers were flying missions and intercept them before they could get to the bombers.... Flying high with their superior dive speed they would blow thru a formation of Migs taking out more than a few of them and the Migs could not follow... And they knew they were flying against Russian WWII aces.... 

 

The F-86's would stay high, the Migs would stay low, the bombers would stay at medium altitudes until reaching their targets.... For the Russian pilots, this took advantage of the Mig's greatly superior rate of climb and the inability of bomb laden aircraft to manuever.... The F-86's would dive into the oncoming Mig formations and the Migs would usually try and scatter, this is why there are many many accounts of low altitude turning fights between Sabres and Migs.... You dive in on the Mig and make a high speed pass and hope you got guns on it before it turned away and you had to use your energy to run.... This revealed a problem with the early Sabres, if you tried to pull too many G's in a turn you could wrench (twist) the tail out of alignment so low level high speed dogfighting was specifically frowned upon....

 

What the record really shows is the superior training and experience of our pilots over the Russian pilots, it made up for the deficiencies of our equipment....

Edited June 6, 2021 by Egilman

[mtaylor]

Egleman, I really believe in "modern" warfare that quality over quantity wins.   Russia suffered horrible loses against the Germans with half-trained troops.  They learned also to give them more training though when the Germans crossed into Russia it was a panic situation.  

[Egilman]

1 hour ago, mtaylor said:

Egilman, I really believe in "modern" warfare that quality over quantity wins.   Russia suffered horrible loses against the Germans with half-trained troops.  They learned also to give them more training though when the Germans crossed into Russia it was a panic situation.  

Agreed, the problem with the Russian pilot veterans was they learned to fight in an entirely different type of combat over Russia, most air combat over Russia occurred in the mid altitudes, between 10 & 20k ft... they needed aircraft that could fly well in that environment it's why they loved the P-39's so much, they excelled in that environment, their own aircraft were designed to fly in that environment as well..... The Germans didn't have much in the way of high altitude aircraft and what they did have wasn't being used in Russia....

 

A different type of combat altogether, much like the P-40 against the A6M over China, they learned to get the most out of the equipment they could using the tactics that worked for them the last time out... They were completely unprepared for the US Airforce and the air superiority tactics learned in the last war......

 

But the one thing you know about the Russians, they learn fast and adapt quickly..... it wasn't as easy in Vietnam basically because we kinda forgot what we had learned in WWII, (and confirmed over Korea) superior equipment does not compensate for training and experience...

Edited June 6, 2021 by Egilman

[lmagna]

15 hours ago, Egilman said:

51 to be exact 43 of them in the US

I had no idea. Not surprising I suppose, as they are probably ten cents on the dollar compared to a surplus F-86 and like an AK-47 are all over the place. The one I saw certainly drew the crowds attention, and for a vintage aircraft still looked impressive going through it's workout. Not as impressive as the modern A-10s later in the show, but still not bad.

[mtaylor]

1 hour ago, Egilman said:

But the one thing you know about the Russians, they learn fast and adapt quickly..... it wasn't as easy in Vietnam basically because we kinda forgot what we had learned in WWII, (and confirmed over Korea) superior equipment does not compensate for training and experience...

That's true.  We forgot the "training" part of the equation and there were equipment issues like the F-4 wasn't really designed for a street fight.  The gun it carried later on was an afterthought.  

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I am posting a small update on the progress of the cockpit. I am following the colors seen on various pictures on internet. I colored the ejection seat, added a seat belt set from Eduard and discolored a bit the belts using a diluited brown oil color from a tube:

 

 

I have the impression that the seatbelts are a bit oversized, but they look the part. The basic color for the interior is a Tamiya dark sea grey mixed with white (3 d.s.g. + 2 white) according to proportions that I mixed by eye. I would like to give the cockpit a 'used' look, therefore I am liberally applying various washes on its parts. The seat pan was treated with a Tamiya brown panel liner, while for the floor I used the brown oil color from the tube after a coat of floor polish. This is the floor treated and the side walls with the floor polish only.

 

 

Finally, also the side panels are treated with the Tamiya brown panel liner and a hand made black wash to pick up panels and controls. Few old instrument decals were also used. The instrument panel and the pedals are from Eduard, specifically made for the new Bronco kit, but the parts can be reasonably fitted also on this kit.

 

 

Now I have to add a couple of red handles from the Eduard set and a coat of matt varnish.

 

This all for now,

best regards,

Dan.

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Danstream

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I have finished the cockpit parts with a coat of Tamiya matt clear which has removed the shine and improved the overall look.

 

 

However, I encountered a problem with fitting the modified parts. I already wrote above that the cockpit is quite cramped and indeed the added lateral handles of the seat could not fit in the small space between the walls and the seat. I hate when this happens, but I decided that life is too short for wasting time with this type of problems, so I cut out the handles and I will proceed without. Well, I said that this will be a closed-canopy model and nobody will peer into the model to check whether all the handles are in there.

 

 

Then, the nice Eduard instrument panel went into place:

 

 

As I sad earlier, I do not know much about Soviet planes, but, at the end, I am satisfied with the look of the cockpit which appears to me to have a certain 'Russian' character. Seen the fit problem I had before, I tried to dry fit check all the parts to be sure that all components will fit inside the fusalage halves:

 

 

Now, I think I have understood the reason for the narrow cockpit: the air passages the bring the air from the intake to the engine are located on the sides of the cockpit and this gets squeezed in size to avoid a resulting too wide a fuselage. Anyway, everything seems to fit quite well.

 

 

Next, the inner sides of the air intake need to be painted and the fuselage can be then definetively closed.

That is all for now,

best regards,

dan.

 

 

Edited June 11, 2021 by Danstream
Corrections, typos.

[popeye the sailor]

look'in good !  

[Danstream]

Hi all,

going on at a slow pace. I did not make up my mind about exposing or not the jet engine provided in the kit. Usually I am a bit critical about these items, especially when they come with movable parts as in this case. The posable parts have generally a toy-ish design which I do not like. This case is not an exception being the details used to join the two parts of the fuselage very obvious. For the moment, I will give it a try and I will defer the final decision to a later stage. Hence, I pulled the engine bulkhead out of the box and found not a very nice part, afflicted by extractor marks.

 

 

These marks are located on a web that shouldn't be there. I presume that these triangular holes are the air ducts, therefore they should be opened up. This is what I did, adding two curved wall that should mimic the internal walls of the air ducts:

 

 

The remaing horizontal sect should represent the rear wing spar that crosses the fuselage (and the ducts) in the middle. In the air intake, on the vertical sect that splits the airflow, there was a headlight faired in the sect. The transparent part of the headlight has an annoying extractor mark on its concave surface which deserves some cares because it will be a focal point of any frontal view of the aircraft. Therefore, I first sanded off the circular extractor mark, then I sanded the part with gradually finer sand paper and finally polished it with a Tamija fine compound. A coat of floor polish followed to restore the shine and protect the part from the fumes of the glue.

 

 

Here, the trasparent part is completed with its edges painted by a black paint to kill reflections inside the glass and ready to be glued on its part holder on the right. The three tiny holes on the part holder should help to make the headlight cavity not gas-tight.

 

 

The headlight on its support and finally inside the air intake:

 

 

Ok, not perfect, but less obvious than before.

Best regards,

Dan.

 

 

 

Edited June 18, 2021 by Danstream
Corrections, typos.

[popeye the sailor]

for clear parts,  you can use canopy glue.  it dries clear and won't mar the glass.  Testor's put out the one I use.

[Danstream]

Hi all,

some small progress on this build that I thought to be an easy out-of-the box one, but instead is requiring a lot of interventions beacause of the very poor fit of some of its parts. This is the ammunition compartment where I replaced the plastic barrels of the two 23 mm guns with aluminium tubes. They look white because I primed them with a Tamiya white primer.

 

 

The kit box advertises the possibility to leave this compartment exposed, but I am not interested in that and I wanted to mount it closed to better reveal the lines of the fuselage. This was the begininning of some fit problems because the lid and the guns seem not to designed for that.

 

 

When I tried to put the parts together, unexpected awfully wide gaps appeared everywhere. In addiotion, lot of filing was required to persuade the gun barrels to fit into their slots. Perhaps it was my fault, but I am really surprised by such bad fitting in a modern kit. To fill the gaps, I started to contour the parts with strips of styrene card (the white parts visible in the photos).

 

 

Before committing the lid into place, I stuffed the weapon compartment with pieces of lead wire:

 

 

The lid was glued into place and the tip of the 32 mm barrel was removed to be replaced later with an Eduard part.

 

 

I completed the final filling of the gaps with pieces of styrene cards and stretched sprue. I also dry test fitted the Eduard muzzle into its fairing:

 

 

Now sanding and further filling will follow, trying not to obliterate too much the surface details. Clearly not an exciting job, but I am afraid one that I cannot escape.

 

See you soon,

Dan.

 

 

Edited July 4, 2021 by Danstream
Corrections, typos.

[Javlin]

Like'n that new flashhider from Eduard Niceee Nice  as to the gaps"it is what it is" "Trumpter" but I still like building their kits and your attack was the right approach.Never done a Mig but you got me think'in but a Mig 3 first though.

[popeye the sailor]

gotta hate that!  I'm in the habit of cleaning up the edging around the part.........either it's not square,  or the mold leaves {for lack of a better word} flash around it.   fit the part in place and your presented narrow gaps.......or exaggerated panel lines.  very nice repair  

[Danstream]

Hi all,
while working on addressing all the fit problems of the fuselage, for a change, I started working on the Klimov-vk1, the Russian version of the RR Nene jet engine. These are the various components just painted.

 

 

I searched on the web for pictures of this engine to find which colors were more likely to be used for it. I painted the matt parts of the jet pipe with a mix of Tamiya matt aluminium and matt white, while for the shiner parts I used various shades of Vallejo metallic colors. The black parts are painted with Tamiya flat black mixed with few drops of Tamiya clear.

 

 

 

I replaced the pins used to suspend the engine with brass tubes for added strength.

 

 

Then I dry brushed the black parts with Humbrol gun metal to highlight some details and finally I used the Tamiya black and brown panel liners on the metallic parts to hint to some weathering.

 

 

Next, I will spray some light shades of brown to simulate the heat scorched parts of the engine.

That's all for now,

best regards,

Dan

Edited July 18, 2021 by Danstream
Typos

[Old Collingwood]

That is looking so nice.

 

OC.

[popeye the sailor]

hopefully there is an access panel that can be left open .........shame to cover up all this super work  

[Danstream]

Hi Denis,

if the engine and airframe turn out good enough, I will have the possibility of removing the aft half of the fuselage to leave the engine exposed. Unfortunately, there is not a trolley for the half fuselage supplied in the kit. I will see when I will be there.

Kind regards,

Dan

[Danstream]

Dear all,

I completed the front office with the gunsight and glued the windscreen on. The windscreen part was masked with a combination of masking tape and masking liquid. I will see later how to fill the remaining gaps between the transparent and the fuselage. Probably, I will try to have several applications of diluted writhe glue.

 

 

This is how the cockpit looks like now:

 

 

At the end, what is visible of the front cockpit doesn't look too bad. The characteristic vertical white strip, which is a trademark of Soviet fighters, is well noticeable.  Then, I had fun adding some weathering to the jet engine. As I anticipated above, I tried to reproduce the discoloration due to the heat by selectively spraying a very diluted red brown.

 

 

This is the rear fuselage dry fitted with the front part. Finally, it starts to look as an airplane and not just as bullet. The unmistakable lines of the Mig 15 can be seen. Its short fuselage and the huge swept backward tail surface can be noticed resembling to some extent the configuration of the Focke Wulf 183. I posed the engine next to it because now I have to decide what to do with it.

 

 

Once fitted inside, the installation of the rear fuselage becomes a bit problematic. The fuselage seems not to fit well the engine and a lot of force is needed with the risk of scratching the paint of the engine. A solution could be to glue the fuselage and scratch build a trolley for the engine so to pose it next to the aircraft. 

 

That's it for now, 

best regards,

Dan.

 

 

[Ian B]

I like the trolley idea-- you can add loads of copper piping etc to detail the engine .. and possibly create some open fuselage access panels for the engine bay?

[yvesvidal]

Maybe something like this ? The tail sits on a trolley, near by.

 

 

Yves

Edited July 26, 2021 by yvesvidal

[Danstream]

Thanks @Ian B and @yvesvidal for your suggestions that were well appreciated!  Indeed, I am considering some of the points you both have suggested and trying to write a common answer to you (that is serving also to clarify my ideas). Basically, I have three options:

a) Having the configuration of the kit, i.e., engine installed on the fore half fuselage and the rear half dry mounted with the possibility of removing it any time as I wish to show the engine.

b) Having the engine installed on the fore half fuselage and the rear half fuselage permanently posed on a scratch build trolley.

c) Having fore and aft fuselage halves permanently assembled and posing the jet engine on a scratch build trolley.

 

Option a), which would be perhaps the better one, looks to be difficult for the reasons I exposed above, i.e. the aft fuselage does not slide easily over the jet pipe and there is the risk of marring the paintwork of the engine. I will do some more tries, but I expect to likely be obliged to drop this option.

 

Option b), suggested by Yves (thanks for the picture), might look quite cool, but in this case, the aft fuselage would need some improvements of its internal structure. Also the bulkhead of the fore fuselage which supports the engine would need improvements and the parts used to keep the fuselage halves together are really very obvious (square tabs into square slots) to be permanently in view. Lot of work would be needed and I am very slow a builder ...

 

Option c), seems to me the most straightforward and a good compromise for finishing the build within a reasonable time. In addition, I would get a complete airframe showing the unbroken shape of the aircraft. Basically, in this case, I will end up with two separate models (the aircraft and its engine) and, to answer Ian, yes, I am thinking to add some tubing to make the compressor area appear 'busier' from few feet a distance.

 

I will ponder the options a bit longer, but I am afraid that c) will be the most likely winner.

 

Kind regards,

Dan.