I have always really liked the MiG-25. A large brutal, yet sleek and elegant looking interceptor from the Cold War. Many years ago, I read the book MiG Pilot, which was about a pilot who decided to escape the Soviet Union in his MiG-25 and made a dash to Japan and freedom. Worth a read if you have not read it.
A company called Flyfans unexpectedly granted me a long standing wish for a nice MiG-25. Color me happy that another one of my top ten desired jets has been done!.
My Flyfans MiG-25 arrived in perfect shape Saturday from Banana Hobby, who appears to be the sole US distributor for this model. Very fast shipping. Ordered it Wed evening, it quickly left CA and arrived here in north Texas late Saturday afternoon, less than 72 hours later. Hard to beat that.
Price is $379.90 with free shipping from BH. A little higher than we are used to, but the reality is that everything is costing more these days.
Very well packed, no damage. The model had just a couple of very small paint blems. The USSR stars are misaligned in a couple of places. Wish they would just let us put them on.
Paint is well done. Almost no evidence of foam beads under the paint, except in a few place on top of the wing, above the aileron and flap servo cutouts. Thin servo covers with matching paint would have been nice to include. I will at some point whip some up done in .010 polystyrene, paint them to match and spot glue over the servos. The elevator servos are harder to hide, so may just paint the servo and arm gray to match.
Panel line detail is nicely engraved and not as overdone as most foamies.
I use EC-5s, so needed to swap the XT-90 plug before I could run it up. Tested the servos and retracts with a servo controller and all working well.
Assembly could not be much easier. I did take a few minutes and used a fine grit sanding stick to remove the small but sharp mold line on the wing LE and horizontal tail LE.
The full flying stab pivots were secured in place with a set screw engaging a turned down area of the stab pivot. This were fairly difficult to screw in far enough to engage the turned down area. I suggest using a good hex wrench.
The model comes with a set of LARGE period correct R-40 air to air missles. Two of the slightly longer radar homing variant and two of the slightly shorter IR guided versions. These happen to be the largest air to air missiles ever placed into service, with a huge warhead generally weighing more than 100 lbs. The missiles slide in to the wing hard points easily.
The centerline tank that is included was a little hard to make fit correctly. It had bowed a little and needed to be bent slightly to engage both sets of hard points correctly.
The nomenclature stick on decals, pre-applied at the factory, had a shiny surface. Planning on adding a little flat or satin clear to them to tone down the gloss. The USSR stars were not as shiny.
The clear canopy has some sort of thin wax coating that is easy to buff off. Canopy is much clearer after thsi coating is removed.
I did not make any assembly photos, so I am attaching a copy of the factory manual for more details.
I had the model assembled and had run it up by Monday evening.
I will admit it looks a little bit off with the undersized in diameter nozzles and oversized canopy/cockpit, but it does capture a lot of the essence of the Foxbat. I forgive the scale sins....
A company called Flyfans unexpectedly granted me a long standing wish for a nice MiG-25. Color me happy that another one of my top ten desired jets has been done!.
My Flyfans MiG-25 arrived in perfect shape Saturday from Banana Hobby, who appears to be the sole US distributor for this model. Very fast shipping. Ordered it Wed evening, it quickly left CA and arrived here in north Texas late Saturday afternoon, less than 72 hours later. Hard to beat that.
Price is $379.90 with free shipping from BH. A little higher than we are used to, but the reality is that everything is costing more these days.
Very well packed, no damage. The model had just a couple of very small paint blems. The USSR stars are misaligned in a couple of places. Wish they would just let us put them on.
Paint is well done. Almost no evidence of foam beads under the paint, except in a few place on top of the wing, above the aileron and flap servo cutouts. Thin servo covers with matching paint would have been nice to include. I will at some point whip some up done in .010 polystyrene, paint them to match and spot glue over the servos. The elevator servos are harder to hide, so may just paint the servo and arm gray to match.
Panel line detail is nicely engraved and not as overdone as most foamies.
I use EC-5s, so needed to swap the XT-90 plug before I could run it up. Tested the servos and retracts with a servo controller and all working well.
Assembly could not be much easier. I did take a few minutes and used a fine grit sanding stick to remove the small but sharp mold line on the wing LE and horizontal tail LE.
The full flying stab pivots were secured in place with a set screw engaging a turned down area of the stab pivot. This were fairly difficult to screw in far enough to engage the turned down area. I suggest using a good hex wrench.
The model comes with a set of LARGE period correct R-40 air to air missles. Two of the slightly longer radar homing variant and two of the slightly shorter IR guided versions. These happen to be the largest air to air missiles ever placed into service, with a huge warhead generally weighing more than 100 lbs. The missiles slide in to the wing hard points easily.
The centerline tank that is included was a little hard to make fit correctly. It had bowed a little and needed to be bent slightly to engage both sets of hard points correctly.
The nomenclature stick on decals, pre-applied at the factory, had a shiny surface. Planning on adding a little flat or satin clear to them to tone down the gloss. The USSR stars were not as shiny.
The clear canopy has some sort of thin wax coating that is easy to buff off. Canopy is much clearer after thsi coating is removed.
I did not make any assembly photos, so I am attaching a copy of the factory manual for more details.
I had the model assembled and had run it up by Monday evening.
I will admit it looks a little bit off with the undersized in diameter nozzles and oversized canopy/cockpit, but it does capture a lot of the essence of the Foxbat. I forgive the scale sins....
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