MiG-21 doesn’t need special introduction. The most produced jet fighter of all times, it has served the Air Forces all around the globe and even today, after more than 60 years of its first flight, it still serves several air forces around the World, including several NATO ones.
I am quite surprised that until now, the industry didn’t bother to touch this aircraft as much as it deserves to be. Apart from nice Revell MiG-21F-13 and Zvezda’s 21bis, all we were left were short run kits and decades old models repacked over and over again. Well, ladies and gentleman, the wait is over!
Eduard announced scaling down of their excellent Fishbed range in 1:48 scale a few years ago and today I have received the special preorder edition of the MiG-21MF, called the “Library Edition”.
The contents:
The kit comes in a rather bland featureless box.
First sprue are the main airframe parts – fuselage halves, wings and aerodynamic surfaces. Breakdown is similar to its 1:48 cousin.
As we are used from Eduard’s latest kits, engraved details are very refined.
The familiar breakdown of the kit, if you’ve ever build one of their 1:48 kits.
Single piece spine with tail. There is a small seam at the top of the spine, but nothing a little sanding won’t fix.
The second sprue contains all the little details – from cockpit and landing gear to JATO bottles, exhaust parts and wheel wells.
Some of the nice details just crying for some paint and wash.
Ejection seat and sidewall – either with moulded details or plain for use with decals or PE parts.
Basic cockpit tub, inner details of rear airbrake, JATO bottles and pitot probe with moulded thin alpha and beta wings.
Front wheel well, exhaust half and part of the main wheel well.
Clear parts sprue is crystal clear and creates no distortion. There are options for two different windshields and three different canopies.
There are no weapons sprues available as of yet but Eduard was nice enough to include 4 Brassin R-13 (AA-2) missiles, along with corresponding pylons and PE details. Unfortunately, there are no external fuel tanks included in this version of the kit.
Small but nicely printed decal sheet. Full complement of stencils and markings for one Czech Air Force bird, which carried Eduard’s logo. As there are no PE parts included in the kit, they decided to include cockpit details as well as ejection seat harnesses as decals which should look ok under the closed canopy.
Last but not least, there are two stickers included in the overall package.
First impressions are great. New tool MiG-21 that we, the gentleman’s scale modellers, have been waiting for ages, is finally here! Library edition does have its limits, but profipack, royal class and other versions are coming in a month or so and I’m pretty sure a bunch of Brassin resin goodies as well. One critique that I can give right away, before starting the build, is that Eduard forgot to (again), mould the front airbrakes open. When the aircraft is parked, they drop a little and it’s gonna be hard to cleanly cut the out of the fuselage and redo it.
Stay tuned for work in progress!
VVS modelling 
I always enjoy your posts. But this kit has been rumored to be released under Eduard many years ago. So this post is special for me and i’m glad that is presented by a geek of Russian subjects.
Finally, is out and many versions will follow. The panel lines and details look very nice. Not too much rivets, not too deep or wide panel lines, very nice! Eduard molds present some details on the aircraft surface 1st time i see on 1/72 mig-21 kit.
The sprues have many goods and there are 2 canopies! Nice to have the instrument panel in clear like the old F-13 Revell’s kit. Lovely to have the extra take off boosters!
The extra fuel tank is for the Romanian Lancers?
What’s the difference on the two Windscreens? (not the canopies)
Regarding the downsides, i was expecting a less complicated construction and not a separate nose ring like the RV has. 😦 that ring doesn’t look good on that scale.
Exhaust looks thick too, both inner and outer lip.
Library edition didn’t have any extra fuel tanks, so I can’t comment on that – I have on my way two overtrees boxes so I’ll see how many are there.
Actually there are 3 different canopies (without and with 2 different style mirrors) and windshields with rounded or squared off front side windows (I’ve seen the latter on Finnish 21bis, but I’m not sure which versions actually used those).
As for the front lip and exhaust – I think with some sanding on the inner side, the looks can be drasticly improved – and even OOB looks better than RV.