AEROTEAM 1/72 MIG-19 FARMER

Reviewer: Myself  (braithy@bigpond.com)

The Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-19 was the first Soviet built mass production supersonic fighter, first seen by the West in July 1955.  Many historians argue that it was also the first production supersonic fighter in the world, beating the North American Super Sabre to that acclaim.  It was widely used, especially in the late 50's, and was in service with many air forces including Soviet Union and Pakistan.   It was licence built (later) in Czechoslavakia as well as in the People's Republic of China where it was designated Shenyang J-6.

This is a injection moulded kit from Aeroteam that has all the appearance as a limited run kit would (including a photocopy-like box cover with side profile of the Farmer), although I have been advised recently that it's essentially a reboxing of the KP kit.  There are about 45 parts, many of them small, with raised rivets/panel lines and etched aircraft lines (flaps etc). The instruction sheet is simply one double-sided A4 sheet with essentially only two constructions steps containing a mass of dotted lines pointing to attachment points.   In spite of this, it is adequate in most of the construction work except for the profusion of air scoops that adorn the fuselage body.  Unfortunately it only has colour call outs for the external sheme and instrument panel - no paint reference numbers are provided and other parts of the kit that needed to be coloured (for instance cockpit interior) have to be determined from a reliable reference source.

It has the typical traits of a limited run kit with a fair bit of flash and almost non-existant internal and wheel well detail.  Fortunately the flash is fairly easy to clean off and once given a wash construction can start almost immediately.   The cockpit consists of a pilot, seat, clear HUD and instrument panel (with decal) - there is no side wall detail, stick or even a floor so I made my mind up straight away to do an in-flight version to save all the extra work.  In the absence of colour references for the interior I simply gave it a grey wash.

Despite the complex looking assembly steps, construction is fairly straight forward with very little fit problems.  Alignment pins and rails are provided to ease construction for the wings, tailplanes etc.  A bit of sanding (and ruining the quite reasonable provision of raised panel line detail) and filling is needed around the wing roots and tail planes.

The nose intake is quite shallow and is a separate piece to plug into the nose.  I painted the interior in silver then aluminium towards the back (to simulate a darkening effect) with a matt black rear wall, which looks much more realistic than a simply shallow silver interior intake!  The intake and the exhaust fairing were both slightly out of shape/alignment when attaching to the fuselage so a combination of sanding and filling was needed to make it not look like a separate attachment. The canopy is one-piece (so you can't position it open unless you separate the windscreen) and sits quite snuggly into its allocated space.  It's clear enough to make out the interior colours and fixtures but is too cloudy to make out any detail.

The real problem in the construction came when a number of fairings and air scoops were fitted to the fuselage.  The main difficulty was their size, being small and quite fiddly - it was a frustrating and time consuming exercise by virtue that there are more of them in number to attach than there are other parts in the kit (or at least thereabouts)!  The instructions were a bit vague in areas, with exact attachment points hard to decipher on the sheet.  Some had 'mold ovals' on the actual fuselage itself to provide more assistance, but in many cases it was a case of constantly referring to reference sources for a completely accurate transition.  Two wing-root cannon muzzles, a starboard nose cannon and two inner wing pylon rocket launchers are the only armament provided in the kit with two auxillary fuel tanks provided for outer wing pylons.

Only one version is catered for in the kit, being a licensed built Shenyang J-6 of the Pakistani Air Force in overall natural metal finish - does that mean that the kit is wrongfully marketed as a MiG-19?!  The decals conformed very well to the surface, and hiding the carrier-film, but were a tad thick and project an incorrect shade of green for the Pakistani roundels (seems a bit too light for my liking). 

With the raised panel line/rivet detail and the plethora of air scoops and fairings, the overall mock up looks quite accurate when compared to reference sources although the nose is a bit stubby and short.  The canopy also looks slightly too large/round when comparing to photos.  Scale size is just about perfect with my only concern being the span, which I think is a millimetre or two under-scaled.

I'm quite happy to give this kit my recommendation and it would suit all but the very novice of model builders.  It makes into a fine replication of the MiG-19S/J-6 with plenty of external detail captured.  Be wary of the flash and common limited run injection mold problems, amount of scoops/fairings that need to be fitted and the shortcomings in the nose profile but other than that it makes into a nice kit, especially given that I picked it up for $4 AUD!!

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This is actually the F6 Chinese built version of the MiG-19 in Pakistani colours, main differences being side-nose aerial, smaller overwing fence and absence of bulge noticeable in the above photo.