ITALERI 1:72 MIG-37B "FERRET-E"

Reviewer: Myself  (braithy@bigpond.com)

This aircraft was "conceptualised" in the days when news networks and aviation buffs thought there was an invisible F-19 Stealth plane flying around above their heads.  In hindsight we know now that we were being mislead and in fact an F-117 stealth aircraft eventually emerged.  The MiG-37 came into being as a speculative Russian stealth aircraft, probably sparked by those who remember the "Firefox" days.  I am not aware of the origins of the MiG-37 but it does seem to be something that the boys (& gals) at Italeri came up with on their own.  Nevertheless they make no bones that it is a figment of their imagination and the kit has been made as a speculative design which supposedly fulfills all the requirements of a Russian stealth aircraft.  To be honest, whoever made up this design should be applauded because it is very unique and believable.  To make this design Italeri says that a lot of studies were undertaken on existing Russian aircraft as well as documents used by the US were used extensively.  The result is a fictional but quite believable.

So it should come as no surprise that I simply purchased this kit for the hell of it, persuaded in a major way by the fact that the Target department store had it out for an absolute steal for a price, in conjunction with one of their 15% off all stock discount days.  I could not pass up the opportunity to create a bit of a talking point to my collection!

So the kit comes in a smallish box, with two sprues containing 44 crisp injection mold parts in black colour!  Panel lines are engraved as are the control surfaces.  It really looks to be a kit that would not take too long or much to finish.  I had already decided that I would produce a black aircraft myself at the end of proceedings so a lot of short cuts could be taken.

For the cockpit you are given a tub with side panel and raised consoled (probably best described as sidewall), a seat constructed with three pieces, a control column and a main panel coming up from the floor with raised detail - really a centre CRT screen a couple of dials and not much else (probably to replicate the futuristic look).  As with the rest of the kit I followed Italeri's instructions on colour and gave the tub a Blue Angel Blue (hereunder "BA Blue") was and light blue seat sides, with dark green cushion and light grey headrest.

The fuselage halves are then put together with the exhaust section and exhaust deflectors, cockpit and nose camera window encased.  I decided on a wheels-up model so if you build a wheels-down one, you will also need to pack in some nose weight as the finished product does feel much heavier in the rear. 

I then covered up the wheel wells and the doors provided needed a slight trim to fit precisely but were also very slightly off line which is noticeable if you scrutinise the area by virtue that it being a stealth design there are a number of corners and edges.  Two missile bays are provided and can be shown open, which I chose to do, and placed the AAMs in the rear bay and a supplied free fall fat 'stealth' bomb in the front bay.  Two bombs are provided so one could use both instead of missiles if preferred.  The interior was painted BA Blue (Humbrol 25 was my choice) as instructed.  The bomb bay doors needed to be cut and were also a little curled - and if you do wheels-down you will also need to cut up the gear doors, which is pretty easy since Italeri provide clearly etched guidelines.

Next came the wings, separate speed brakes, tailfins, intake fans, intake cover, two-piece canopy (and HUD), and rear underside section and that was construction completed!  Of course add on the undercarriage if you are doing wheels down. I didn't use any filler for the model or any sanding, but some small gaps were plugged up with the hobby glue.  The cockpit interior just under the windscreen was painted duck-egg blue with black anti glare panel and a rear panel in BA Blue.  For some reason this didn't look right and a bit too bright, but once the canopy was in place and the frames painted black, it covered up most of the blue and didn't look so conspicuous.

Two versions are provided for by the kit in speculative finishes.  One is overall black while the other has a half/half (ie: upper/lower split more or less evenly) gull grey upper and white lower scheme.  Given that the plastic is black I would think that it might actually be a little difficult getting a good finish in the second scheme by virtue of a bleed-through effect, that would mean the model requires a couple of coats.  This was partly the reason why I chose the overall black finish, also influenced by it being very easy and trying also to conceptualise a foe to the F-117, and used Humbrol 85 satin Coal Black followed by a clear coat of varnish.  Navigation points (which appear to be lights) were painted yellow as instructed.

The decal sheet contains two identical sets of stencilling and roundels, one set in a maroon colour - for the black aircraft - and the other in grey - for the gull grey/white scheme.  The bottom of the box is the best source of putting on the decals, but the instructions also show where the stencilling goes, it's important to keep your wits about you given that the colours are different - but its easy to follow all the same.  The decals are of typical Italeri quality, nice and smooth but susceptible to moving around a lot.  The stencilling took hours, er... days (or so it seemed) as there is a myriad of it to apply.  Yucky white water marks and marks from the decal setting agent made it look quite disgusting when the decalling was finally finished.  But I touched over the white marks with the black paint again and then gave the whole aircraft another coat of gloss cote, followed by satin varnish for the finish, and you wouldn't even know - scrubbed up exceptionally.

Overall the aircraft looks quite menacing and a likely foe for the F-117.  It looks very realistic and believable.  Since it is conceptualised there is no need to check for accuracy but it does look like a MiG-37 :)!!  The kit is very easy to build, didn't require any extra skills as such (other than covering the decalling marks) and really was also a very quick build because I chose to finish it in black.  This means that many of the panels and aircraft parts that are slightly out of eyesight can be left unpainted.  The whole kit was finished (after detailing the cockpit) in a couple of hours, including paint drying time.  For anyone who is interested in this kit, I can highly recommend it.

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