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New twin 6S 64mm MiG-25 Foxbat from Flyfans Models: mini review

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  • New twin 6S 64mm MiG-25 Foxbat from Flyfans Models: mini review

    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....
    Attached Files

  • #2
    After a busy week, I put the first flight on the Foxbat Thursday afternoon. Used a 6s 60c Zippy Compact 4000 pack. With that pack, the CG was spot on the reccommnded location,125mm aft of the wing leading edge and fuse intersection

    Overall, I really like it. Presents well in the air. Looked awesome doing a low pass down the runway.

    It does have (at least mine did) an odd oscillation that shows up when taking off. It wants to rock left and right harder and harder as it accelerates, to the point of the wingtips touching the runway. Not in yaw, in roll. The mains were sort of hopping a little one at a time. Unsual. Aborted two take offs on our very smooth runway. Appears related to landing gear alignment and somewhat soft main gear springs, plus a narrow wheel base.. My nose wheels are slightly tight on the axle, which might be a contributing factor

    Moved over to our short (in grass height) grass runway. The oscillation went away. Model took off smoothly in about 200 feet. A little slow on the initial climb, but got up on the step after getting level. Speed was more than decent, but not quite as fast as I expected/hoped.

    Smooth flyer. I did a couple of rolls and a simulated landing approach at altitude. Then made an approach at half flaps and it was very groovy all the way to landing. A touch of throttle and it touched down very lightly on the main gear, like the proverbial feather. Landed in the short grass, as well, until I work out the oscillation issue.

    The control throws in the manual are a lot more than I needed. I toned them down a lot.

    Will tinker on the landing gear. Might try locking the spring action on the mains, loosen up the nose wheels, check wheel alignment and see what it does. Not running a gyro at this time.

    Looking forward to more sorties with this interesting model!

    Here is a pic of it resting in the late afternoon sunshne after the flight.
    Click image for larger version  Name:	Mig25.jpeg Views:	0 Size:	265.7 KB ID:	340778

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