Esci MiG 23 Repair Job

This is a sad tale of an Esci MiG 23 that hadn't been put together properly. Now that its owner (yes, it is OK to malign him) has reached a decent age and has acquired some patience and skill, he would like to repair this dismal job that he did back when he was, but a mere 12 year old. (see, Steve Hanson, I didn't blame you for doing such a crappy paint-job...~evil grin~)

Surprisingly this MiG 23 has come along with me relatively intact from Maple Ridge to Vancouver to New Westminster and surprisingly is, to my neophyte AMS (Advanced Modeller Syndrome)-infected mind repairable. Now these are the parts that I feel need work on to repair.

   :
Because I cannot get in close enough with this camera to show the small 1 1/2 mm crack in the canopy, I can't really get this to show up without it going all blurry on me. But take it from me, it's just 3mm in front of the nylon fishing line that I'm going to have to cut off eventually.


I will have to try to get some pictures of the cannon used by the MiG 23 so that I have something to go off of, but I intend to scratchbuild cannons for all three of my MiG 23s. What I was originally intending was to use small bits of wire glued into holes in the original cannon base drilled with a pin-vise. But I figure that since the detail of the original is so crappy, I'll try to scratchbuild something that looks more realistic.

   
The landing gear is so damaged that I just intend to remove the landing gear and nosewheel doors, and fill in the space with putty. Then scribe the details onto the putty so that I can just build the thing with "gear up" and flying. The landing gear and nosewheel doors are complete writeoffs and I'll choose to scribe the details by going off the new kit's parts.

   
The real damage came where the under-fuselage tail fin was. That part has broken off near completely. This will probably entail getting sheet styrene and rebuilding up a new tail-fin. This in itself would be a job, however I have two new MiG 23 kits to go off of as templates for the tail-fin and at least it will give me some practice in doing something about this damage.