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About the importance of a millimeter


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The MiG-21 F-13 have an trunkated ogival nose like almost all jets with frontal air intakes. The top of the nose is almost straight but in fact convex.

realF13nose.JPG

(modified pic from Primeportal)

In the Revell kit, there's a kink between the front fuselage and the nose ring part. This makes the top of the nose seen from the side concave.

revellF13nose.JPG

(modified pic from the ARC Gallery)

Replacement resin nose rings do not change this. The fix is easy really: glue some plastic card on top of the nose, blend with filler and sand. Interestingly very few people have done this when they built their Revell kit. Perhaps because people are blinded by the beauty of a kit and don't look at its shapes anymore. No need to measure anything, no need to compare the kit with drawings: do you know a lot of jets with concave noses ? In the end, a model can look weird only because there's a millimeter or even half a millimeter missing.

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You need a close up picture of the model to make a valid comparison.

Not only that, but it needs to be at the same angle as the picture of the real plane is.

You mean in general?

True, good photos are always the best source for such comparisons.

In this care there's no need for them since Laurent is absolutely right.

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Replacement resin nose rings do not change this. The fix is easy really: glue some plastic card on top of the nose, blend with filler and sand. Interestingly very few people have done this when they built their Revell kit. Perhaps because people are blinded by the beauty of a kit and don't look at its shapes anymore. No need to measure anything, no need to compare the kit with drawings: do you know a lot of jets with concave noses ? In the end, a model can look weird only because there's a millimeter or even half a millimeter missing.

Or perhaps they just aren't worried about it to the degree you are, and just enjoy modeling for modelings sake, without feeling the need to correct every possible flaw however large or small. Not everyone really cares if a piece of plastic matches up perfectly to drawings, or even compares them to drawing to begin with. They build it to whatever degree makes them happy, and move on. More and more as I read peoples issues with kits, I realize how little most of them mean to me, so I ignore them.

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Or perhaps they just aren't worried about it to the degree you are, and just enjoy modeling for modelings sake, without feeling the need to correct every possible flaw however large or small. Not everyone really cares if a piece of plastic matches up perfectly to drawings, or even compares them to drawing to begin with. They build it to whatever degree makes them happy, and move on. More and more as I read peoples issues with kits, I realize how little most of them mean to me, so I ignore them.

I more side with this. If there is something glaring with the kit that doesn't look right, then I won't buy it or I'll try to correct the problem. But little details and subtle curve differences don't bug me too much. then again, I haven't been intimate with these machines as some of you have, so my opinion might be skewed by inexperience.

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Or perhaps they just aren't worried about it to the degree you are, and just enjoy modeling for modelings sake, without feeling the need to correct every possible flaw however large or small. Not everyone really cares if a piece of plastic matches up perfectly to drawings, or even compares them to drawing to begin with. They build it to whatever degree makes them happy, and move on. More and more as I read peoples issues with kits, I realize how little most of them mean to me, so I ignore them.

I perfectly understand that each person doesn't emphasise the same word in the expression 'model kit'. But I still believe that a number of people assume that a beautifully engineered kit is accurate. The point of the topic was about the impact of a millimetric or sub-millimetric dimension on a principal feature of a model (nose shape). Apparently the Revell kit has several accuracy issues (I think these were discussed on a German website) but that's not the point here. I'm talking about one issue (that I thought to be obvious and that's easily fixable), you're talking about every possible flaws. You're talking about matching up a model with drawings when I say that just a glance at a picture is enough. Would you ignore models with noses like these ?

weirdNosedF86.jpg

weirdNosedF100.jpg

(modified Wikipedia pics)

Edited by Laurent
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Indeed he is.

Whoa, what did they do to the nose in MiG31's link? :wub: Look at the kink in the contour of the lower side of the nose. HERE's another shot of that aircraft. It's just speculation on my part, but did they install the nose assembly ahead of the canopy upside down? :wub: Look at the panel lines. Compare the shape to THIS ONE and the panel lines on THIS ONE.

Edited by ChernayaAkula
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It's just speculation on my part, but did they install the nose assembly ahead of the canopy upside down? :wub: Look at the panel lines.

Considering the weird nose shape and the strange panel lines, I'd speculate instead that this aircraft's nose has been destroyed and that they've rebuilt one.

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I have to admit I hadn't registered the uppercut on the underside of the nose, thinking only about that contour ahead of the windscreen. You're right, the nose does look off on that example. It could be inverted, but I wouldn't say with certainty, at least not without a better photo.

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Its a monument - that has probably been cobbled together from various parts.

The panelling on the sides and bottom of the nose is just that - tinplate rivetted into place to complete the display, it is not a completely 'real' MiG-21 nose.

Look at the tinplate rear 'canopy' - pop rivetted into place.

This happens a lot - they are monuments to Soviet aerospace - not accurate replicas of hardware.

Ken

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