MPM 1:72 MIG-9F FARGO

Reviewer: Myself  (braithy@bigpond.com)

The MiG-9 prototype is reputed to be the first Soviet Jet Fighter to fly, making its maiden flight one hour before the Yak-15 Feather, which was ready first, but the flight decided by a toss of the coin!  The MiG-9F is a single seat fighter with a large nose intake, having a 37-mm cannon protruding from it's centre, and twin 23-mm cannons under the nose.  It was powered by twin turbojets mounted laterally in the lower portion of the forward fuselage to exhaust under the wings trailing edges, plus underwing (tip) slipper tanks.

Nice box artwork with the aircraft streaking and turning 'toward the camera'.  Inside the box are about 45 light grey limited run injection mold parts on one sprue.  There is also a vacform canopy and photo-etched brass detail set.  Flash encumbers most of the parts in the kit, and while not excessive, will require cleaning, especially fuselage halves.  Not a great amount of detail scribed, and what there is, is very finely engraved, hardly noticeable on the end result. 

The Instructions are set out in a small A5 sized booklet that contains a brief aircraft history, advice on modelling MPM kits (which is quite good for those who aren't up to speed on their engineering techniques), a diagram of all the parts in the kit, Humbrol colour call outs (which like even newer kits sometimes quote out-of-date numbers!), a reasonably clear set of about ten assembly steps - including a number of small diagrams showing exact positioning of certain parts etc, a painting instruction guide and a catalogue list of  other kits.  All in all the instructions are pretty good, especially the smaller detail diagrams.

Construction begins with the cockpit which is provided for by (plastic) base with molded-on side panels, seat cushion, rudder pedals, control stick, main instrument panel (with finely raised detail) and rear bulkhead doubling up as the pilot's seat back.  In addition to this, the brass photo-etched detail set includes side instrument panels with throttles and knobs to put on seperately, sidewall console for inside the fuselage halves and seat belts.  Being 1/72 scale it was very difficult and time consuming getting the cockpit scrubbed up but spent some time making an effort which paid off handsomely.  It is best furnished with the detail set if you have any experience with same, although I found superglue the only way to go.

The fuselage halves were then to be put together and one must spend a bit of time fixing the cockpit into the right place, plus the internal nose intake trunk.  Some nose weight is also required, as this model is a definite tail-sitter.  Once these were secured, the halves went together and trapped everything rather well, but needed to be clamped tight around the nose intake section.  The halves also did not line up 100% correctly and the resulting join lines needed sanding and a bit of filling.

Next came the attachment of the underfuselage engines and rails.  The exahaust cover is attached to a brass exhaust plate, which also encases the exhaust tube.  The instructions say to cut the tube about 1.2 mm so it just protudes out of the exahaust cover, I'd suggest you carefully study reference drawings/photos for an optimum decision.  The instructions are a bit vague in directing how to go about the whole exhaust assembly, but I attached the plate to the aircraft then the tube onto the plate (right in the centre) then finally the cover and this seemed to work okay.  After this I attached the railing scoops along side of the exhausts as directed.  I also put on all the ducts and scoops onto the external areas of the fuselage and found them to be a slight overscaled.

The wings and tailplanes were then put on - I had already attached the underwing-tip tanks which sat very nicely in the teeth-like grooves - and these featured a connector pin which is unusual for MPM kits.  It didn't take me long to work out it was too good to be true as they are utterly useless.  I cut the pins off the wings and tailplane and butt glued them to the aircraft, because the pins were way oversized and would not fit into the groove anyway.  As expected filling and sanding were called upon around the joints.

Next comes the undercarriage and these are 'basically' replicated but still reasonably accurate.  The brass set can also be used to enhance the undercarriage with hubs and struts catered for.  These went together okay and were a bit difficult getting affixed into their appropriate wheel wells.  Unfortunately the result shows a slightly angled main undercarriage sit which I am disappointed about.  For those wishing to do a wheels-up model, the gear door fits are terrible and will require a lot of trimming and filling and sanding.

The final assembly stage was used to detail the aircraft and add on the nose guns.  The guns were pretty crude, the undernose cannons attached okay but did not point straight out so required a bit of gentle but firm coaxing to ease them into an acceptable profile.  The main nose cannon didn't like going on (it was a bit heavy for the jutting out profile) so a dab of super glue was used to hold it into place.  It also seemed to have a slightly curved profile for some reason at the tip, and needed to be carefully positioned to hide it.  The main aerial was catered for from the brass detail set, but other smaller aerials and probes are not catered for in the kit and need to be added by the modeller, from stretched sprue.

Two versions are provided in the kit, one in an overall aluminium finish and the other in an overall surface grey finished (Humbrol deleted number 162).  Both versions indicate black underside behind the exhaust to the rear point of the aircraft.  I disagreed with this and chose to use a darker metallic grey, gunmetal, which appears more accurate.  I also used the Matt Aluminium Metalcote from Humbrol to finish the model in resulting in a rather nice but slightly tacky product.

The decals are produced by Propagteam and were thin, but in good register and conformed very nicely to the surface.  Care needs to be taken, though, because they are so thin and easy to shred.  One of my yellow 'lightning' like stripes ripped itself and was an absolute arse to try and get back onto the model so it looked like it never broke.

The finished model measures up well but the nose profile is too blunt side-on and too round from the front-view profile.  One can get quite a reasonable MiG-9 out of this kit but some extra effort and time put in, and it is certainly not a kit for the less experienced modeller.  I'd recommend this kit for the modeller who wants this aircraft in this scale, but it is by no means perfect and this needs to be taken into account.  Overall a job requiring effort and skill to get a really decent finish.

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