As to dimensional accuracy, surface detailing and overall fit, I wouldn't rate the Trumpeter MiG-23s, both 32nd and 48th scale, bad kits. If you want to build a quarterscale M/MF, go and get yourself the big Ciro Model correction set, sand the radome into shape, correct the cockpit sill's way too steep inclination, and Bob's your uncle. It looks pretty much like a MiG-23M/MF.
ML/MLD - different story.
The entire fuselage between fuselage station 1 (aft of the radome mount) and 6B (running below the windshield) was completely redesigned to accomodate the slightly larger (in diameter) radome with its distinctive nose droop.
On earlier MiG-23s, the entire section between windshield and radome was tapered all around. On the MiG-23ML/MLD, however, the flanks and lower fuselage contour run straight away towards the radome, the lower contour resulting in a subtle "kink" where the IR sensor sits. In this regard, an MF would be as identical to an ML as a YF-16 to an F-16A.
Trumpeter once again took the easy way on their ML/MLDs by adding a few panel lines to the forward portions of otherwise unchanged fuselage halves and enclosed a new, way too long and oddly shaped radome. It simply doesn't look right...
Other issues are sort of "inherited" from previous releases; cockpit sill way too steep; the sill should run almost parallel to the fuselage datum line. Windshield too short, too steeply inclined as well. Canopy longitudinally way too bulged - the upper profile actually runs rather flat. Intake faces' cross section inaccurately reproduced, though I wouldn't deem that as critical. As is, and personally speaking , the Trumpeter ML/MLDs are like a girl with a perfect-10 body and a fairly deformed face. Or in the context of sexual equality: putting John Cryer's head on Hugh Jackman's body. Accordingly, I decided to design an all-new corrected forward fuselage.
Editor's note...
My key criterion in assessing a kit's "accuracy" is shape: "Does it look right?" It may be one or two millimetres off, but it may still look right (to me).
The MiG-23 is far and away my favourite jet aircraft and I've been waiting for many years for a state-of-the-art kit.
Correspondingly, I'm biased and demands are high. Or in the given case, if it doesn't look right, I will make it look right in such a way, that it will finally meet my personal requirements - it's just one of the problems you're facing, if you're both ambitious and very familiar with a particular aircraft. And I want to have at least two finished Flioggers in my cabinet before I go west.
Erik
