Mig E-152A Modelsvit 1/72

[johnr]

Family photo I3U, E150 and E152A


Not the easiest build. Nearly all joints need some filler.
Fitting the cockpit, airbrake and its mounting, and engine nozzles required a lot of fiddling and trimming.
Ignore the PE inlet guide vanes. There are some plastic ones on the sprue which are easier to attach and more amenable to trimming when fitting the nose cone.
There is one basic error. The instructions call for the pitot tubes by the forward u/c door to be fitted on the wrong side.

[Massimo Tessitori]

Very rare plane. I like it.
If I am not wrong, this is related to the Chinese fighter J-8 I, predecessor of the better known J-8-II that has nose and intakes as the MiG-23.
Regards
Massimo

[johnr]

The J8 was smaller and flew several years after the E-152A. The E-152A flew in 1959 whereas the Chinese did not start thinking about the J8 until 1964 and it got started in 1965. Given the secrecy surrounding all the Russian programmes one wonders if the Chinese knew very much about it other than it had existed.
John

[Massimo Tessitori]

So, the J-8 derived directly from MiG-21?
I would love to see the models side to side, maybe with a Su-15 to make a comparison.
Regards
Massimo

[AC26]

Hi Massimo,

First of all happy to see you and site are well!

J-8 was based on knowledge Chinese had got while partially getting material to license manufacture the MiG-21F before break in relations with the Soviet Union. Part of the material was not available so they had to reverse engineer part of the aircraft before starting manufacturing of it as Chengdu J-7. As they saw need for heavy fighter MiG-21 was used as a starting point in design as a lower risk alternative than a clean paper design. For later models they obviously got ionspiration from MiG-23s obtained from Egypt late 1970's.

Cheers,

AaCee

[Massimo Tessitori]

Hi,
thank you for the explanation. J-8-I seems nice enough for a conversion from J-8B of Trumpeter. I wonder if pieces of Su-9 or 11 could help...
Regards
Massimo

[johnr]

From Chinese Aircraft by Gordon and Komissarov it would appear that the E-152A and J8-1 were about the same size although it was stated that the J8 was based on a scaled up MiG 21 which might account for the slimmer fuselage of the J8.
John

[AC26]

Hi,
thank you for the explanation. J-8-I seems nice enough for a conversion from J-8B of Trumpeter. I wonder if pieces of Su-9 or 11 could help...

Hi Massimo,

You are welcome!

I was looking for the same conversion earlier. Problem is lack of reliable drawings but based on what have been published mostly in  Gordon and Rupprecht Chinese-aviation related books and photos it looked like the early intake is at the same place were radar dome is attached. Supposing so first the side intakes need to be removed and front fuselage sides built up. Maybe bigger problem is beefing up the middle fuselage as F-8B has area rule Coke-bottle effect in the fuselage. Also turning ventral fin below the rear fuselage need to be replaced with a fixed one. Then depending on version armament and canopy may need to be changed as well as everything I have forgotten...

There are good-quality (looking) decals made in China at least for J-8B so I'll start with it WHEN I built my first J-8

Cheers,

AaCee