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ART Model 1/72 MiG-23UB is out


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Does someone know what happened about MiG-23BN molds that Kopro started working on ? Perhaps these were used in a way by someone ? I cannot find the molds photographs anymore.

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The Art kit looks a "bit" suspicious. The fine details are too similar, have a look at the wing and the upper fuselage! Its like a short run injection molded copy of the RVA kit with some modifications to make it into a MiG-23UB. It is possible to take an original (even plastic) part and make from it a short run mold. You dont need much to do this.

The vertical stabilizer is only shorter since the UB's back is higher so the vertical starts further back than on the fighter version.

As to the ethics of doing a copy or to be more precisely taking an original (the MF or ML kit) and making something else (a UB version) from it is another question. But in business there are no friendships and the one to be first on the market with a long waited kit will have more sucess. Copyright is not something greatly thought of as we go in an Easterly direction.

Best regards

Gabor

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Does someone know what happened about MiG-23BN molds that Kopro started working on ? Perhaps these were used in a way by someone ? I cannot find the molds photographs anymore.

Hi Laurent,

KP was bought by a Hungarian company who are re-releasing some of the older kits (under the name KP Models)but also adding to them new decals, resin and etched parts as well as doing new developments. As far as I know the MiG-23 was not part of the deal and it remaind in the Czech Republic. What they are doing with it is unknown. We would need to ask the Czech readers on this forum about this. They should know more.

Best regards

Gabor

Edited by ya-gabor
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I heard from Radek. Here's the box art for RV's (original) MiG-23UB. Look for it next month!

http://www.modelforum.cz/viewtopic.php?f=592&t=62485

Thats just the box art. It would be interesting to see the sprues. If they are identical with the one from Art then there are no further questions as to who took what from where.

Best regards

Gabor

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I heard from Radek. Here's the box art for RV's (original) MiG-23UB. Look for it next month!

http://www.modelforum.cz/viewtopic.php?f=592&t=62485

Hmm, from the link, it looks like he has a lot of other AM goodies coming up for the Mig-23 variants ( avionics bay, etc).

But I am severely disappointed that there's no word about a 1/72 Mig-27M. I want my Indian & Sri Lankan Attack Floggers !!! :soapbox:

Edited by JackMan
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Hmm, from the link, it looks like he has a lot of other AM goodies coming up for the Mig-23 variants ( avionics bay, etc).

But I am severely disappointed that there's no word about a 1/72 Mig-27M. I want my Indian & Sri Lankan Attack Floggers !!! :soapbox:

If we're lucky, the delay could mean RV is doing a new windscreen and canopy. :pray: Simply including the pointy-nose-MiG-23 canopy and windscreen with their duckbill-MiG-23s (I've got their MiG-23BN) just doesn't cut it. They're too different to simply swap them like RV did.

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Simply including the pointy-nose-MiG-23 canopy and windscreen with their duckbill-MiG-23s (I've got their MiG-23BN) just doesn't cut it. They're too different to simply swap them like RV did.

Holy cow I missed that. That's what RV did ?!?! For a 25-30 euros kits ?!?! Thank god I didn't order the BN. Bye bye ethical considerations... come on ART, debug the RV kit if he cannot do it himself.

It is NOT a copy of Zvezda, those discussing Russians can say what they say...

Do you know this Czech comparaison page ? http://skopam.blog.c...ezda-vz-rvresin

Look at:

- the depth of airbrake wells

- the structures of main wheel wells

- the way the fuselage halves have been cut

These make me think that the person who did the RV masters started from resin copies of the main Zvezda kit parts, did a huge amount of work on them and entirely redone some parts.

Edited by Laurent
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.. Bye bye ethical considerations... come on ART, debug the RV kit if he cannot do it himself.

....These make me think that the person who did the RV masters started from resin copies of the main Zvezda kit parts, did a huge amount of work on them and entirely redone some parts.

Let me play the Devil's Advocate;

They say necessity is the mother of invention. Or in this case, innovation. RV is a one-man-operation. Had we left it to the big boys ( Hase, Acad, Trump, etc) who knows when we'll ever get a 1/72 Flogger that's reasonably accurate? Heck, even Revell Germany....which has easy access to actual former East German 23s have ignored them ( despite coming up with a fantastic Mig-21F-13). I don't like RV's prices but he does include a shipload of goodies in his kits. One man doesn't have the resources that huge companies like Eduard have. I can't blame him if he took other people's stuff and modified them. 'Cos now we have very nice 1/72 Floggers. Besides, who knows how many other cottage-industry, garage business/part-time business, modelers are doing the same? Taking stuff, modifying them into something better ( and much needed) & then marketing them? I think I recall seeing Dr. Peppers masters here for some of their 1/72 F-16 stuff. They basically used Hasegawa kit parts, modded them and made them more accurate. In the process, they provide a great service to us modelers who have longed for better accuracy in our kits. We all know how Hasegawa churns out the same basic, outdated molds with either new decals or a few measly ( and sometimes inaccurate ) pieces of resin/white metal and then charges much higher prices than the basic kit. From a modeler's point of view, I'm glad folks like Dr Pepper & RV are going all MacGyver (ie improvising) on these kits and making them available to us modellers. Doesn't it feel good to have 2 or 3 RV Floggers on your shelf and not having to cringe whenever you see Zvezda's squashed canopy Mig-23 or their tiny, undersized canopy+windshield Mig-27?

It's a lot like car & bike owners modifying their basic vehicles, pimping their rides, and then selling them. B)

And I won't mention the Trumpeter 1/32 SU-27 and what they did with Zactoman's parts....

Yet folks continue to buy & support Trump..

*woosh...Devil mode off....disappears into a red, eery haze :gr_devil: *

Edited by JackMan
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Let me play the Devil's Advocate;

Who's the Devil ? RV , ART or both ?

but he does include a shipload of goodies in his kits.

Yes (if you buy one of the interceptors, you can make any versions of them if you forget about small details like some panel lines) and no (no ordnance).

One man doesn't have the resources that huge companies like Eduard have. I can't blame him if he took other people's stuff and modified them. 'Cos now we have very nice 1/72 Floggers. Besides, who knows how many other cottage-industry, garage business/part-time business, modelers are doing the same? Taking stuff, modifying them into something better ( and much needed) & then marketing them? I think I recall seeing Dr. Peppers masters here for some of their 1/72 F-16 stuff. They basically used Hasegawa kit parts, modded them and made them more accurate. In the process, they provide a great service to us modelers who have longed for better accuracy in our kits.

Oh I don't blame anyone for using the Zvezda kit as a base to tool a much better kit as long as some extensive work has been done. There's no question that the RV kit is a huge improvement over the Zvezda kit.

What makes me cringe is that RV throws out rivets at the customer that may be left to think that the drawings or kits are so detailed that the products must be accurate. The MiG-21 drawings book is cramed with rivet lines but the version specific features often aren't represented. The nose of MiG-23BN drawings are covered with oval rivet lines which indeed corresponds to reality (even though they are barely visible). In the MiG-27K drawings, more oval rivet lines... but they don't exist in reality (just straight rivet lines). On the B/BN kits, RV can provide provide fighter-type transparencies instead of fighter-bomber-type transparencies because the customer only cares about the beautiful riveting... well that's what he's supposed to do.

Edited by Laurent
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Holy cow I missed that. That's what RV did ?!?! For a 25-30 euros kits ?!?! Thank god I didn't order the BN. Bye bye ethical considerations... come on ART, debug the RV kit if he cannot do it himself.

Yup, that's what they did. Not only does it have a wrong shape for a duckbill-Flogger, you can't build it with the canopy closed, thanks to the steeper slope of the duckbill-Flogger's nose. Trying to build it closed will result in a huge gap along the windscreen-canopy seam. It can't be filled, as it would look really odd. No two ways about it: RV really dropped the ball on this one!

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Yup, that's what they did. Not only does it have a wrong shape for a duckbill-Flogger, you can't build it with the canopy closed, thanks to the steeper slope of the duckbill-Flogger's nose. Trying to build it closed will result in a huge gap along the windscreen-canopy seam. It can't be filled, as it would look really odd. No two ways about it: RV really dropped the ball on this one!

Damn. I hope that someone will do something before the MiG-27K is released. Thank you for letting us know.

Edited by Laurent
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The RV drawings look fantastic at a first glance, very glamourous, with thousands of rivets and seemingly all the details ( of every possible sub type) that even the MiG OKB people are not aware of. But when you compare them to the real aircraft they are useless!

Still the RV MiG-23 MF kit is the best available to date. But will it be tomorow too???

Best regards

Gabor

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The base of the canopy should slope down and it's pretty much horizontal on the ART kit ? the top and bottom of the canopies when seen from the side should be parallel and it isn't the case ? I wonder if the Balaton front fuselage + canopies look right.

Edited by Laurent
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Yup, that's what they did. Not only does it have a wrong shape for a duckbill-Flogger, you can't build it with the canopy closed, thanks to the steeper slope of the duckbill-Flogger's nose. Trying to build it closed will result in a huge gap along the windscreen-canopy seam. It can't be filled, as it would look really odd. No two ways about it: RV really dropped the ball on this one!

This is a most peculiar mistake, considering that RV went through the trouble of molding an entirely new clear sprue for the MiG-23BN kit. I got one in mail today and I have to admit the canopy really looks identical to that of the interceptor version. But did you actually dry fit the canopy and verify your claim of gap? I think this deserves a closer look.

Other than that, this really looks like a nice kit. The same base parts as the original Hell Fighter, plus a new front fuselage and a resin exhaust, rear fuselage bomb racks and an IFR probe for Iraqi version.

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<...> did you actually dry fit the canopy and verify your claim of gap? I think this deserves a closer look. <...>

Yup, did that. :thumbsup: I'll try and take some pics later this weekend (am kinda busy right now).

Dry-fit or not, the different geometry of the noses means there will have to be a gap. The pointy-nose is flat on the top, the duckbill's slopes down.

"Monitor" on flugzeugforum.de measured the length of the armoured glass windscreen on both versions in a German museum. The pointy-nosed Flogger's windscreen is 65cm long, the duckbill's is 84cm long.

I do agree that the rest of the kit is gorgeous. I'd happily get a couple more, but until I figure out what to do about the canopy, I'll hold off.

Edited by ChernayaAkula
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Yup, did that. :thumbsup: I'll try and take some pics later this weekend (am kinda busy right now).

Dry-fit or not, the different geometry of the noses means there will have to be a gap. The pointy-nose is flat on the top, the duckbill's slopes down.

"Monitor" on flugzeugforum.de measured the length of the armoured glass windscreen on both versions in a German museum. The pointy-nosed Flogger's windscreen is 65cm long, the duckbill's is 84cm long.

Okay, so we might see something similar on the forthcoming '27s as well - the versions I'm really looking forward to see. Oh crap.

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Wow. Where did I say that ?

I will compare. And you're right, those Russians can say things that aren't true.

One man can makes drawings. The same can eventually make masters. However I doubt he can tool steel molds and inject plastic in them. There's expensive hardware needed. We aren't discussing of a resin kit here.

Hi Laurent,

Oh yes he CAN. You don't absolutely need steel tooling to inject plastic, you use steel only if you want to inject millions of copies (which is fine if you make something like shampoo bottle caps, electric drills or computer casings but useless and needlessly expensive if you are a one man company that makes a product that fits a small niche market). Even Revell and Hasegawa do not produce kits in the millions, the market for those quantities simply does not exist (unless you are talking car kits, but those days are now gone, that was when i was a kid in the 1970's). Even they are likely using aluminum molds to reduce costs (and to avoid various maintenance issues). There are dozens of other methods to make injection molds, depending on how many parts you want to make, lead time and how much you want to pay for tooling.

Thickness of parts have nothing to do with the fact a kit is pirated or not, it's got to do with how many tons your press can inject. If one of them is using a low pressure injection press, his parts thickness, sprue and gates will be different than those of parts made with a standard press. Meaning he would have to modify his tooling.

When i was student in industrial design, we injected buttons for something that was a bit similar to a smart phone out of a mold made of wood. All you need to make an injection mold is a piece of hard sugar maple (very dense and with nearly zero texture) quickly milled and put in the injection press, et voilĂ  ! Check my website for the fastest type of (serious) rapid prototyping injection mold in the industry, which i made in 2007. It can be used to make a lot of high quality injected parts if you know what you are doing. That's a tooling i made in less than 1 week (it can be reduced to 3 days total if you are well prepared and have everything in hand).

These days all you need to make a good mold is a bloc of aluminum and rapid CNC, if you do it with the right equipment it will even pick up even fine scratches on your master (if it was made from a master that was scanned in 3D).

He also does not need to own the injection and milling equipment, he can sub-contract the work, but even a full-size old mill in Eastern Europe can be had for not much, and there are several guys who have a one-person injection company who do have their own press and mill their molds themselves. The options are more numerous these days and you don't need to own these, but i can understand why some of the model kit company guys choose to own the equipment, if only to control the process, reduce the costs of milling, injection and modifications to the tool, and reduce piracy risks.

One anecdote: i showed sprues of an aircraft model kit to give a rough idea about what an injected product i was planning to do might look like to a guy who is much older than me at a place where they do injection and who was the senior technician there, when he saw the parts and the amount of details, he was visibly scared and he said: ''Not here... not here...!". They also didn't know how i would make the masters and tooling for producing large quantities of good quality injected parts myself for a relatively 'low' cost (i basically ended up showing them how it will be made and how much it will cost and what equipment i need to make the tooling as well as how many hands will be involved). The owner however understood me much better and knew the same as i did, but simply wanted me to give him CAD files and charge me for everything that would happen after that (no way..., i prefer to design the tool myself and only sub-contract the injection, and split the profit with him. How sad however that he did let me use his lone injection press... (which is catching dust most of the time as he does not really use it for production) as i might 'break it'... (even though i have used presses that were 3 or 4 times bigger than his: the size of train engines, and 4 of them at the same time that is (!), when i was a working student).

If he had let me use it he would already have made a neat bunch of tens of thousands extra money. Well.. we'll see, i made a bet with him and i am about to come back with a bunch of CAD models that will surprise him.

There are so many technologies available to pirates and 'recasters' from the injection industry that people at trade shows have to be very careful about industrial espionnage. Piracy in the injection industry is nothing new, it have existed since the days of the pantograph many decades ago and it was fairly easy to do, these days sadly it is much more easier, but with the advent of web forums like ARC, Twitter and so on it is also easy to almost instantly show when a product was pirated and to tell people to avoid it.

Stephane

Stratosphere Models

Website: http://www.picturetrail.com/stratospheremodels

Edited by Stratospheremodels
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Quick photo from my stash.

MiG-23UB01.jpg

Unfortunately busy week for me. Will check it Sunday (approximately).

Peace

P.

Are the bases of the front and rear canopies at the same level ? is the canopy block sloping down ? it's possible that ART screwed up the height of the rear canopy because its base is hidden by the intake. Because of the later, the inaccurate canopy may not be too visible when looking at the model from the side. We'll see if the RV kit will be more accurate... given the B/BB transparencies, I'm not holding by breath.

Edited by Laurent
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It took some time...

Both halves of BalatonModell flusage on a grid. Rear cockpit visibly higher than frontal.

MiG-23UBBalatonModell01.jpg

Inside..

MiG-23UBBalatonModell02.jpg

Quick look at main cockpit part attached to flusage halve.

MiG-23UBBalatonModell03.jpg

Belly UP, same elements turned upside down. Additional element to glue inside front wheel bay.

MiG-23UBBalatonModell04.jpg

Instrument panel - front on the left, rear on the right side also forms a wall w/ rails for frontal ejection seat.

MiG-23UBBalatonModell06.jpg

Triple "S" - Spine, stick & seat (last two doubled ofcourse)

MiG-23UBBalatonModell05.jpg

Canopy, is a hard task to take a right picture to show what it really looks like. Plus I did something wrong with resizing process.

MiG-23UBBalatonModell07.jpg

MiG-23UBBalatonModell08.jpg

MiG-23UBBalatonModell09.jpg

Hope this will help somehow.

Peace

P.

Edited by Piotrek.S.
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Thanks Piotrek ! Balaton got the "basics" right, ART didn't. I may try to see what could be done to improve the situation on the ART kit. The extensive decal sheets and weapons sprue of the ART kit reduces the disappointment a little. The Balaton conversion looks pretty rough so I'm not sure that I'd buy it.

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