Laurent

A little reminder of what the story is about. Self quote... "the MiG-21PF/.../MF nose is to the Su-9 nose what the MiG-21bis nose is to the Su-11 nose": - Su-9: in side view the top and bottom nose curvature is smooth; there's not curvature discontinuity; the cross-section changes smoothly from oval to circular - Su-11: perhaps it's due to a bulkier radar equipment bay but Sukhoi changed the nose... they cut the Su-9 nose and replaced it by a nose that has a symmetry axis (cylinder); there are curvature discontinuities; the cross-section change is abrupt It's the same sto

The modelforum.cz webmaster. He didn't renew the SSL certificate used for secure connection between our browsers and the website. It expired three days ago.

It's not a Mirage 2000B but it's KT201: an Indian Air Force Mirage 2000TI which itself is an upgraded 2000TH. I hope an IAF experten chimes in.

I'm very happy ! Question: are there visible differences between the Su-22M (Peru, etc) and Su-22M3 (Hungary) ?

Look at the the September 29th 2023 post of the other forum. Looks somewhat identical. It seems like seven months later they're still at the 3D prints build stage.

Just an educated guess. I think it was because of engine fleet maintenance rationalization. Hungary had MiG-23s that used the Klimov engine used in the Su-22M and Su-22M3. Using the M4 would have required maintaining also a Lyulka engine fleet. Gabor could probably confirm or infirm.

There was no outer wing station on the IIIR and IIIRD so no missiles. The diagram I talked about comes from a Dassault manual. 5BR (https://www.airliners.net/photo/Belgium-Air-Force/Dassault-SABCA-Mirage-5BR/6569971) and IIIRS (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Dassault_Mirage_IIIRS,_R-2108,_Swiss_Air_Force.jpg) versions did have outer wing stations but not the IIIR and IIIRD versions.

Zilch. I've looked at this book (https://modelingmadness.com/others/books/poi/poim3v2.htm) and there's no photo of a Mirage IIIRD carrying weapons. In the Mirage IIIR payload diagram the JL-100R hybrid rocket+fuel tank could be used but the rest are fuel tank and recce pod. I assume the IIIRD could also carry the JL-100R but there's no photographic evidence to back this up.

About wings and stabilizers geometry. Vladimir Klimov did good MiG-21 drawings used in Yefim Gordon books. The MiG-21bis drawings are interesting because there are two types on front views in it: - fuselage axis perpendicular to drawings plane - aircraft on it landing gear so ground plane perpendicular to drawings plane The second drawing helps to understand the RFM silhouette: stabilizers"dihedral" and wing cross-section come from the nose-down attitude. The angle between fuselage axis and the normal axis is smaller in the RFM silhouette than in Klimov however: fron

I didn't notice these until today. In the silhouette I think they should be hidden by the wing thickness.

Thank you Inquisitor for the illustration. Some comments though: - stabilizer: the CAD designer did the stabilizer mechanism fairings on top and bottom near the root. They have the same height and this suggest that the stabilizer isn't tilted but perpendicular to the screen plane - fuselage tank: the projection used in the CAD seems to be orthographic (the radio-altimeter antennas under the wing tip are just vertical segments) but if you look at the fuselage tank it doesn't correspond to your drawing (tilted cylinder of elliptic cross-section)... in the CAD you see two ellipses and I

It comes from a CAD render: there's a shadow.

I had some spare time so I played with Paint.

Google agrees: 2°.

RFM has posted a teaser on their Facebook page. It's a 3rd (S, R, SM, M, MF) or 4th (bis) generation MiG-21 but the scale isn't specified. The K-5 missiles are surprising but I believe they were still used in training at the time of the 3rd generation versions. What doesn't look quite right to me: - stabilizers: I think anhedral should be 0° and they seem placed a little high on the fuselage - canopy: I think the cross-section should be semi-circular not parabolic - things like reinforcement plates on top wing above the outer pylons Anot