Revell 1/144 scale MiG-23 and Mig-27 Flogger

 

I’ve been steadily building my collection of 1/144 planes to give me more flexibility in building lists for Team Yankee, Fate of a Nation and Flames of War, all 15mm tabletop games from Battlefront.

I started with kits of Soviet aircraft although I’ll probably get suitable Polish markings for them.

The MiG-23 was originally designed by Mikoyan as a fighter replacement for the MiG-21. The requirement prioritized better low-speed maneuverability, the capability to carry and guide beyond visual range missiles, a much more powerful radar and relatively Short Take Off and Landing capability. The Mikoyan developed two concepts, one with lift jets and one with a variable sweep wing. The first was quickly abandoned, the second became the MiG-23 and, later, the MiG-27.

The MiG-23 series became the most produced swing-wing aircraft in history, with more than 5,000 units produced. The F-111 and F-4 Phantom both influenced the designers. By 1990 there were more than 1,500 in service with the Soviet air forces and derivatives were widely exported to Soviet client states.

These kits are quite old now, having been released in 1988 as AP4006 and AP4008. The versions I got on eBay were bagged, later versions of the same model are boxed and they have been re-released by several manufacturers over the years. The kits were produced in South Korea.

The 40 or so parts come on two green sprues with a separate transparency for the cockpit canopy. The parts fit together reasonably well. There was some flash particularly on small components such as bombs and missiles. The overall shape is convincing and can produce a reasonable model with a good range of weapons, except for the undercarriage.

The engine air intakes are poorly designed and easy to put in the wrong place. There is no cockpit, just a flattening of the fuselage where the transparency goes. The model has a neat wing design which enables you to swing the wings of the completed model, but the nose cone is poorly designed and has to be fitted by eye, as does the whole front fuselage and the elevators. The fin and the ventral fin both have pins, while the elevators don’t.

Strangely the MiG-27 kit has the same nose as the MiG-23, when the former had a distinctive wedge-shaped nose containing a laser rangefinder. There are other more subtle differences between the two, none of which are evident (for example, the air intakes were different on the MiG-27). These are basically the same kits with different armament options.

Possibly the worst feature is that the kits can only be assembled with the undercarriage down, and there are no undercarriage doors. Thus, to suit the planes for flying I had to fabricate undercarriage doors from plastic putty or rely on conversions. On the actual aircraft the undercarriage doors are a feature when the undercarriage is down and obviously are flush with the rest of the fuselage when retracted. If you want the kits in landing configuration, the parts provided bear almost no relation to reality and would be best replaced.

Academy has a kit of the same aircraft which is a re-release of the Revell model, with its same failings, while MiniHobbyModels’ MiG-23 has the great advantage of having both a cockpit and undercarriage doors and gets my vote as the better of these kits.

The Revell models are rather disappointing kits and the lack of cockpit and absence of the option of assembling them in flying condition is very unfortunate.

The moral of this story is do your research on Scalemates.com before you buy a kit!

Fortunately, my friends at OzMods produce a conversion kit which includes the missing undercarriage doors and alternative noses for MiG-27.