Eduard recently released two very good 1/144 MiG-15 kits. This is the PE detail set designed to make the kit even better.

What you get is a fairly small PE fret with color cockpit components and aluminum colored parts. This is pretty good, since most of the exterior parts are will be natural aluminum when finished. There are only enough parts to upgrade one aircraft per PE set.

The Cockpit

This utilizes the Eduard cockpit tub. I painted the interior medium gray (36320) and the seat black. Then the PE instrument panel goes in, and the PE seat belts. The seat belts are absolutely super. There are also two side consoles and two handles which go in the cockpit. I used Gator Glue to put these parts in.

Following the instructions, I put the cockpit into the fuselage along with the intake splitter, and glued the fuselage halves (top & bottom) together. Back to the PE.

Wing Fences

Next step was to remove the molded in wing fences and replace them with PE parts. I did this before with another PE set. I painted the wing before I put in the other set, and I had nothing but trouble with the wing fences falling off. So I put the fences on the unpainted wing. I used thin CA, trying to keep the amount of glue to a minimum, as any extra really shows. I also used CA because I had trouble keeping the parts aligned, and using accelerator allows the CA to be set in a big hurry.

I then painted the entire aircraft with aluminum metalizer and put a coat of Future on. The Future protects the aluminum, which rubs off easily, and gives the decals a good smooth surface to stick to.

As I was putting one of the fuselage decals on, I managed to knock one of the wing fences off the right wing. So I worked to remove the CA on the wing to give me a clean surface to work with. And knocked the other wing fence off too. I replaced both wing fences, but I’m not happy with the job I did.

Landing Gear Doors

The gear doors are quite nice. The three main gear doors require folding, as some of the detail requires more depth than a single sheet of metal can give. The doors folded nicely and played well with the landing gear legs and the fuselage and wings. I used Gator Glue on these too. The nose gear doors presented a challenge because of the guns on either side. It made getting in there with the tweezers problematical, but it only took me three attempts total to get the two doors in.

Overall Evaluation

Recommended. The cockpit additions are nicely done, and add a lot to that area. The gear doors are good, about scale thickness, which is very difficult in this scale with plastic parts. I’m not happy with the wing fences, but someone out there is going to be able to do a really neat job on these. I look forward to seeing that.

Many thanks to Eduard for this add-on, and to IPMS/USA for letting me do it