A while ago George asked me some questions about making decals. He had a project in mind and shared some pictures with me. Although I don't really like Russian aircraft, I instantly wanted to build the same one myself. It was a wildly colored Mig-23MF from Yugoslavia. "Hell Fighter" sports a black/red/grey flame scheme with a stylized devil on the vertical stabilizer. I knew that I couldn't reproduce the marking with my Xerox machine and decal paper routine, so it was passed on to our local decal-guru Mike Grant. The results are now for sale under his product line.

I choose to do the kit in 1/72. Mostly because of the lack of a good kit in 1/48 and not wanting to spend serious coin to make the Esci kit accurate. Trying to find accuracy in 1/72 is also tough, but Zvezda makes a decent kit. It does suffer from a not-so-clear single piece canopy, no cockpit detail, raised lines and moderate need of putty. I dipped the canopy in Future floorwax to help solve some of the distortions, but ended up cutting the part display it open. There was no cockpit set available in resin or photoetch for the Mig-23, so I used Eduard's Mig-21 set instead. It looks reasonably close to a 23's. A replacement K-36 seat from True Details was found and used. The photoetch sidewalls did require some minor cutting and trimming to get them to work with the seat. I liked the instrument panel with the transparent dials. The details help to busy up what would have been a void.

The raised panel lines were not really a preference and since all the existing kits have raised lines, that was a good thing. The fit of the kit will require some filler putty along the top/bottom halves and where the intake to fuselage connection. Sanding will take away a good portion of the detail lines. I later scribed the majority with a bare metal scriber.

The rest of the kit builds up in a typical fashion, and fits well. Painting was achieved using Night Black, Italian Red and Aircraft Grey. The red flames were hand sprayed on the real a/c and show a varying amount of over spray. Mike Grant Decals are easy to use and respond well to several decal setting solutions. My preference is Gunze's Mr. MarkSofter. A final shot of semi gloss finished off the kit.

Thanks to George Spelitz and Mike Grant for their assistance with this project.