Infernal intakes

The Mikoyan MiG-AT is rather less of a design departure than the Yak-130, and in fact somewhat resembles the L-139 it was designed to replace. It had its first flight nearly 20 years ago and never made it into production.

The kit is another early AModel effort, and was even a bit more diabolical than the Yak-130 has proven to be. The main issues in this kit revolve around the intakes. The fit is suspect, the parts breakdown does you no favors, and it seems as though it is missing a part. If you look at photos on the net, the intake rim is fairly sharp. The kit parts are at 90 degree angles, and rather flat. I’ve tried doing a bit of filing at the edges, but it doesn’t seem to be improving things at all. I keep looking for an intake leading edge part – like the Su-28 had – but there is nothing there.

What is worse, the intake assembly does not fit into its assigned wing/fuselage location at all. Much putty will be involved in getting out of this one. I even had to do some scratching of a part to eliminate a giant gap between the intake floor and the wing top that it rests on. I realize that this description probably doesn’t make much sense unless you have the parts in front of you, but let’s just leave it that this is probably one of AModel’s lesser jobs.

Here is a photo of the MiG-AT in progress; as you can tell I haven’t quite got the intake problem resolved to my satisfaction yet.

Next: Hurricane heaven.