This is my Mig15 bis built for a groupbuild elsewhere. It's a North Korean aircraft but flown by a Soviet pilot. American pilots encountered marked differences in the training and skill displayed by these opponents and dubbed them 'Honchos.' This particular aircraft shows three kills in the usual Soviet manner of red stars behind the cockpit. The Mig15 can be arguably considered to be the last of the WW2 era jet aircraft. The engine was a reverse-engineered Rolls Royce Nene affording excellent climbing ability. What the Mig15 lacked, but the Sabre pioneered was the so called 'All Flying Tail' which was a configuration whereby the entire horizontal tail surface acted as the control surface...the Mig still retained hinged control surfaces.
This is the Tamiya 'clear' kit. It comes with a pretty basic interior including a fair representation of the engine. The tail section is designed with two 'clasps' so that it can be removed to display this engine but I chose to fill the holes and glue the tail in position. The rest of the fuselage is moulded in transparent plastic to enable the innards to be seen. Tamiya have been trying to gimmick up this kit for a while now. The last offering was exactly the same kit but the sprues were all plated with a mirror-like silver. These two ideas aren't bad but one wonders how to eliminate those pesky seams which only serve to make a model look more like a model.
I love this kit and I've built it twice now. As I typed the above...I had an idea to superdetail the engine and build a maintenance themed dio with one of these. Hmmmm.......
Mig15bis b.jpg
Mig15bis c.jpg
Mig15bis d.jpg
Mig15bis e.jpg
Peace.