Bilek 1/72 MiG-19P Farmer B

BILEK 1:72 MIG-19P "FARMER-B"
'INBOX Review'

Reviewer: John Thompson (from rec.models.scale Jan 2001)

I received the new Bilek 1/72 MiG-19P today from Linden Hill Imports. This is a very good-looking kit; comments are as follows:

The kit is molded from a medium grey plastic, which seems a bit on the soft side. There are approximately 75 parts in total (plus five parts which are X'd out on the instruction sheet as being for subsequent releases of other versions of the basic aircraft), a two-piece canopy, and one resin part, which is the nose intake splitter. Six decal options (two Russian, two Bulgarian, one Czech, one Polish); the decals look very good, and are printed by Tally Ho.

Pro's:
(1) Surface quality is quite good, with very little flash except on some of the smaller parts (landing gear legs, for example). It should not be difficult to create an effective natural metal finish with very little extra surface preparation.
(2) Panel lines are very finely engraved.
(3) A reasonable attempt has been made to provide good cockpit and wheelwell detail, although some of this detail, especially on the cockpit side consoles, is not very sharply defined. The KK-2 ejection seat is poorly represented; consideration should be given to using the NeOmega replacement.
(4) The canopy is thin and has good clarity.
(5) Paint colours are referenced by Testors Model Master numbers, and, where applicable, by FS-595 designation.
(6) The decals, as mentioned, are well printed, with excellent colour register.

Con's:
(1) The resin intake splitter ends suddenly just inside the intake opening, with the inner part being a flat disc which completely blocks the opening. This disc is close enough to the front of the intake that it will be easily visible, no matter what colour you paint it. A skilful (and determined!) builder will be able to improve it a bit by cutting and filling away most of the disc; however, the splitter will still be very shallow. Bilek could have done a much better job here, considering that they went to the trouble of casting the part separately.
(2) The nose wheel leg is very spindly; it might be beneficial to replace it with the same part from the old KP kit.
(3) The main landing gear leg location points are simply tiny round studs, with no obvious way to attach the legs themselves, unless you can glue them to the outer end of the wheel well cutout in the lower wing surface. It may be necessary either to create a location hole for the legs with a short piece of styrene tube glued over the "studs", into which the leg can fit, or else to reinforce the butt joint between the end of the leg and its stud by drilling them both and installing a short piece of wire.
(4) Since the fuselage halves are designed to apply to several versions of MiG-19 with both short and long noses, the extra nose length of the MiG-19P is made up with an insert section. It appears that this will need careful fitting and blending if the profile shape of the nose is to be achieved without any steps or changes in curvature.
(5) There are no clear location points for the many small afterburner cooling scoops on the rear fuselage, so careful reference to the marking location drawings which are included is necessary in order to place these accurately.
(6) The location of the horizontal tailplanes is identified only by a faint outline of the root fairing engraved on the sides of the fuselage.

The above are mostly very minor criticisms of small details which might have been handled just a bit better. Without reference to any drawings, other than those provided in the instructions to show colour and marking details, I can't comment on the overall accuracy of the kit. Personally, I have no hesitation recommending this kit; while it won't build itself, with a little care and application of some technique, a very satisfying model will result.

John Thompson

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Aeroteam 1/72 MiG-19 Farmer

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