Confused?
You will be. I know I am.
After much poring over books on all things Mig, with particular focus on -21s and much rifling through that t'Internet thingy, I think I have a reason for my initial confusion. The main clue came from OKB Mig: A history of the design bureau and it's aircraft with some help from my Plane's and Pilots:Mig-21 book.
You are correct OT. The MF did have a skinnier spine, but only to start with and this is where the confusion occurs. During development of the later Mig-21s the company played around quite a bit with fuel tankage and electronic equipment. The focus for much of these adaptations was the dorsal spine that grew, shrunk and changed shape quite a number of times. Not all of these were successful however and to understand them it is first necessary to explain part of the type's timeline.
After the -PFM series Mig produced the Mig-21M with a full length continuous narrow spine. The -M was a short-lived variant that quickly gave way to the improved but outwardly similar -MF. During -MF production a lot of dorsal spine mods were tried in order to increase range and electronic equipment and this resulted in -MFs with a "fat" spine similar, but not identical to that seen on the -bis. These -MFs were followed by what seemed to be a logical progression i.e. an aircraft with a greatly enlarged spine...... the Mig-21SMT. This aircraft wasn't as good as was hoped as the bulged spine caused lateral instability when full of fuel so the designers reverted to a slightly extended version of the "fat" spine as seen on later -MFs while retaining the -SMTs improved engine and avionics. This aircraft was, of course, the-bis.
This is, I'm certain, as clear as mud to most people. Even I have difficulty getting my head around it, but pictures don't lie and I do have a picture of -MFs on a production line being built with "fat" spines while others are in the factory being modified thus. To make it even more confusing -MFs were being produced like this under licence (notably in India) while the -bis was also in production.
The only difference between these 2 types is that the spine on the -bis extends a little further along the base of the fin. The following picture makes this a little clearer, I hope.
The aircraft in the front is a -bis, while the one behind is a late model -MF. You can clearly see the larger spine on the rear one but it tapers off further forward on the fin than the one in front of it.
So, it's down to the individual aircraft and again, I'm afraid, Berna are no help at all as far as references are concerned. Unfortunately I can't find any pictures of the aircraft I want to build so I've had to cast around a bit for a way ahead. This came from a bit of lateral thinking about my original plan for a Malian Air Force machine. A change of search terms, casting a wider net enabled me to find a site for a company called JBr decals who produce an African Mig-21 sheet including 2 from Mali. One of these has the same camouflage scheme as one of those offered by Berna. Better still, JBr's website gives colour 3-views of all the aircraft on their sheet and while the one I'm interested in is an -MF I can transpose the identical camouflage pattern directly onto my -bis.
In all honesty, I would never have been able to make even a remotely accurate guess at the opposite side/upper camouflage as it's so random.
All I need to do now is choose paint colours and break it to Fred that I've had another change of plan
And I have started building. In fact I started building over a week ago but haven't had time to update this thread. So here's what I've done so far.
First a bit of interior parts prep. Out with the Metalcote and barf turquoise...
Fujimi's cockpit is pretty good straight from the box. Certainly adequate enough to live under a closed canopy...
Some weight was required in the nose. I find roofing lead quite good for this. Suitably battered into shape, of course...
Then everything was closed up. Liquid poly and an overnight clamping did the job...
Assembly advanced pretty rapidly after that...
Although there were some surprising fit issues and a sink mark in the nose. Both Vallejo putty (thanks Ratch) and Squadron Green were required.
I forgot to open up the slots for the pylons
but holding the model up to a light source made the wings adequately transparent to mark these out and removed the offending styrene. Then the pylons went on too.
And, as you can see, the blast deflectors and small intakes are also on.
Hopefully, I'll get a bit more done before Monday.
Darryl
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