1/48 Trumpeter MiG-15-bis

by Li Weiguang

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The  '325' MiG-15bis is the plane of Yevgeny Georgievic Pepelyayev---- top Russian ace of the Korean War 1950-1953.  I painted the nose all red at first, then used AutoCAD, bubble jet printer, the yellow underlay paper of the decal sheet, Tamiya tape and a knife to create 2 masks of this number, stuck them on the nose and painted Gunze 159 super silver all over the model finally.

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The kit fits pretty good.  But I strongly recommend anyone who build the plane to enlarge the aft fuselage inner space and test fit the engine BEFORE gluing the 2 parts of the aft fuselage together. It's a good place to settle some lead fuse under the nose avionics bay and in front of the instrument panel to avoid the plane from becoming a tail sitter.

The decal is tough, but used both Mr.Hobby blue cap and green cap softer, and some patience, it will look very nice when its done.

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The head rest on the ejection seat is wrong.  I acquired a spare one from a friend from his Tamiya kit .  Anyway, Trumpeter has a much better vertical tail and gun bay, avionics bay......

Weiguang

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Photos and text © by Li Weiguang