Cold War subject...

... and Cold War plastic. I began the Mig15 kit bash this evening, and it certainly is going to be a kit bash and some more. It is now very clear that I have a genuine bit of Cold War (and I mean 'classic' Cold War, not all that 1980s, SS20, Cruise Missile, Protect & Survive, dancing, prancing Greenham Cold War) kit on my hands. Starting with the cockpit tub, I added the resin ejector seat:

Let me digress for a moment ... the tin is, perhaps, of greater interest than the cockpit tub. The tin now contains bits of white metal off-cuts, some of which will go to weight the nose of the Mig, but, once, oh, once, the tin held the most divine of all pipe tobacco. I speak, sirs, of Peterson of Dublin's UNIVERSITY FLAKE. But, alas, the smoke is too perfect, too satisfying, so I avoid it now, as it weighs the game of pipe smoker's Russian roulette a little too heavily in favour of the demon,

 Nick O'Tine.

Back to the kit. Even in this photograph, it is clear that the cockpit tub is a heavy duty affair, but look at the 'detail' on the fuselage:

It looks like a steam punk's fantasy of a late Victorian boiler. I have resisted checking Mig 15 photographs in detail, as I would be very surprised if the panels match anything that existed in real life. I don't intend to totally remove all these bumps and lumps and then rescribe, but I will sand down a great deal. But this is not all. Below is the interior of the fuselage - a formless thing, with no location lugs for anything:

Yikes!