Mig-13 "Fishpond"

[chrisonord]

During the Korean war, several F-86 Sabres, in various states of crash damage were collected by a joint team of Soviet and Chinese aviation specialists. Both the Chinese and Soviet airforces were concerned about the F-86's overall superiority at dog fighting than their new state of art Mig-15, and were somewhat red faced by this.
The Chinese and Russians took the F-86 wings and reverse engineered them then integrated them into a fuselage design that was stolen from the Swedes. This fuselage allowed for a bigger more powerful engine than the one fitted to the Mig -15 this engine was the forerunner to that fitted to the Mig-21. With this engine and sharper swept F-86 wings, the new Mig, could break the sound barrier in level flight. Other performance properties were also taken from the F-86, in the form of an all moving tail wing. Armament consists of 4 AA-1 Alkali missiles, 2 23 mm cannon and 2 30 mm cannon.
This aircraft far exceeded performance expectations, and because very little R&D was needed, thus making the aircraft very cheap to produce and thus making it an attractive export proposition. The Mig-13 was thus named so as to trick the west in to thinking this aircraft pre-existed the Mig-15, but intelligence reports and photography of the testing and construction aerodromes proved otherwise. The aircraft was ordered by the Egyptians, Iraq, China and Cuba. However, only China got the chance to put any of these very capable aircraft into service, as Egypts aircraft were destroyed on the ground, just 2 days after they were delivered, by the Israeli airforce. The IAF thought these new aircraft were the much less capable Mig-15, and therefore did not photograph them whilst they attacked the airbase they were stationed at.  The Iraqi's suffered a similar fate when their newly assembled but not yet commissioned Mig-13's were destroyed by an Iranian insurgent team armed with plastic explosives.

The build will be an Airfix Saab Tunnan fuselage and running gear, Matchbox F-86 wings, tail wings off I cant remember, and AA-1 Alkali's either from my ICM weapons set or off my SU-9 teapot.
The colour scheme so far will be dark yellow and red brown, with PLAAF markings borrowed from a Trumpy IL-28.
I have only just started the office paint on this thing and will do some pictures when it looks a bit more aeroplane like.
Cheers,
Chris.         

[chrisonord]

Today I have put the office together and into the fuselage, then the fuselage halves together,and the new nose cone. Then I put the nose wheel well section on. What an awkward fit that lot was,I was sat holding it all together using my fingers as clamps and each with a different amount of pressure exerting on them.So there I was for 10 minutes whilst the glue had other ideas on what it should be doing. Lots of PSR going to be needed here me thinks .The F-86 wings have had the wheel wells blanked off with filler, and are going to get measured up for some pylons.
The gun ports have been drilled out also and now actually look like gun ports!! I will have a look for something suitable to use as cannon barrels to stick in the holes for the 30mm cannons.
Cheers,
Chris.

[Sauragnmon]

Looking forward to seeing the pictures mate, she's good so far.

[chrisonord]

Right then, here is some pictures of the work so far, the kit has raised panel lines so I shaved and smoothed those off, and had great fun getting the wings to look right, the jury is still out on those, as I will check them out when the filler is rubbed down. The pylons are some spare ones from an Amodel Yak-130, and they needed a lot of work just to get them to look something like. Hopefully it will get some paint tonight and I will decide what final colour scheme it is going to have.



Cheers,
Chris.

[puddingwrestler]

Reminds me a lot of the ol' Aurora MiG-19/Yak-25 of blessed memory. I like being reminded of this.

[chrisonord]

I am glad you like it PW, it has not been as easy a whiff as I had anticipated, but you can't have it all your own way can you?
I painted it all over air superiority blue with the airbrush tonight, and I only managed to get one coat down when the compressor went bang, literally!!
So the base coat is a bit thin, but I am hoping I can fix my compressor to do the underside again. Top side is going to be red brown and dark yellow. The nose cone is done in matt red as are the wing tips. I still need to sort some longish barrels out for the 30mm cannon it is going to have. I am quite happy with the way it looks as it looks reasonably soviet to me.
Cheers,
Chris.

[chrisonord]

After a bit of umming and arring, The tail wings have been given the boot as they were just too wrong. Even though they came from the same aircraft, one was bigger than the other!! So off they came, to be replaced by the ones from the F-86, which to be honest will be a bit more fitting with the rest of the bird. Oh and I managed to resurrect the compressor yesterday without blowing myself or the house up......which is nice!
Chris.

[cthulhu77]

Whiffer and a mechanic !    Looking forward to seeing the new wings.

[noxioux]

It has a nice stubby pre-cold war look to it.  Looking good so far

[chrisonord]

Here is some more pictures of this small, yet big pain in the butt!!
I have problems with this thing that just should not happen, firstly the clear coat decided to remove the colour, so I had to re paint the top again, then  the only spare (that I can find) Egyptian markings fell to bits on me even though I put some decal seal stuff on them, oh and I can't find anything that looks right to use as 30 mm cannon barrels. So this thing might change colour and nationality soon.
PLEASE NOTE!!!
Although some bright colours were used in the painting of this model, NON of them were gloss, thankyou.





Cheers,
Chris.

[lancer]

|she might have been a opain in the arse Chris, but you've done a bang up job on her. Nice one!

[puddingwrestler]

Well, atleast it looks good! I might just have to grab another Tunnen and try playing round with a similar 'bloated soviet' looking machine.

[sideshowbob9]

Nice model

[pyro-manic]

That is extremely cool. I love the tubby fuselage combined with the sleek wings and the sharp nose. Fantastic!