MIG-3 Engine Start

[Lovefordgalaxie]

Starting the "engine" on my paper model MIG-3

[chunkypeanutbutter]

THIS. IS. AWESOME.

[cobraman]

Cool !

[Ira]

That's Great!

[unclescott58]

What the heck? That's a paper model? I assume your using an outside source, and fan or something, to blow on and rotate the propeller? Impressive.

Scott

[Lovefordgalaxie]

Thanks guys!!

[Lovefordgalaxie]

What the heck? That's a paper model? I assume your using an outside source, and fan or something, to blow on and rotate the propeller? Impressive.

Scott

Thanks!!

Yes, it is a paper model, it's a Model Art kit.

Mikoyan I Gurevich MIG-3 by Lovefordgalaxie, on Flickr

Mikoyan I Gurevich MIG-3 by Lovefordgalaxie, on Flickr

Mikoyan I Gurevich MIG-3 by Lovefordgalaxie, on Flickr

Mikoyan I Gurevich MIG-3 by Lovefordgalaxie, on Flickr

Mikoyan I Gurevich MIG-3 by Lovefordgalaxie, on Flickr

To rotate the propeller, I used my airbrush compressor and my Badger 350 without the paint, of course. The propeller spins really fast, but the camera makes it look like it's slow, or almost spinning backwards. This is something I'm seen on real 1:1 airplane videos on YouTube.The sound is a recording from the engine start of a real Mikulin V12 on a real MIkoyan Gurevich MIG-3 I had in my computer. Had to do some try and error to synchronize the video and the sound, but I guess it turned out OK.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Lovefordgalaxie

[Ace-Garageguy]

That's just too cool. Biggest grin I've had in a long time.

[unclescott58]

By the way, the MIG-3 looks a lot like a P-51 Mustang. When did the real plane come out? Before or after the P-51? And how was its performance compared to the Mustang?

Scott

[Jim B]

Túlio, that's so cool! I really like the sound effects with the real Mig-3 engine start.

Scott, the Mig-3 was produced in 1941 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikoyan-Gurevich_MiG-3 ), and the P-51 was produced in 1940 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_P-51_Mustang ). They were both designed as high altitude fighters, but the Mig-3 wasn't as good as the P-51 or the Bf-109 in that roll. Or some of the other contemporary Soviet fighters for that matter.

[Ace-Garageguy]

And the Mig 3 was a development of the Mig 1 (designed in late '39) which looks very much like the 3.

The airplane has always looked like a Russian cross between a Mustang and a Spitfire (first flew in '36) to my eye. Similar tail feathers and plan shape to a Spit, with similar-appearing tapered wings and rounded wingtips, but with the Mustang's wide landing gear and belly scoop. Good looking airplane in any case. And surely influenced by the Spitfire, if not the Mustang.

The Mustang also had a laminar-flow wing which helped its speed, and which the Mig 1/3 lacked. And though the Migs appear to have a similar belly scoop to the Mustang, they also appear to lack the remarkable ducting through the radiator that eliminated almost all of the drag associated with cooling (and some claim actually provided additional thrust by efficiently managing the flow of heated and expanding air after it passed through the belly-mounted radiator).

There are a couple of these in the US, at least one in flying condition, I believe. Some acquaintances of mine brought one in, maybe 20-25 years ago.

Edited September 17, 2014 by Ace-Garageguy

[Lovefordgalaxie]

By the way, the MIG-3 looks a lot like a P-51 Mustang. When did the real plane come out? Before or after the P-51? And how was its performance compared to the Mustang?

Scott

The MIG-3 started being developed in 1939 as Project X by the Polikarpov Bureau, chiefed by Engineer Nikolai Nikolaevich Polikarpov, the so-called "king of fighters", was the most important fighter designer in URSS. In August of 1939, Polikarpov assigned a team from his Bureau to start developing his basic sketches, the engineers were Y.Seletskiy, Nikolay Matyuk, Mikhail Gurevic, Alexey Karev and Vladimir Romodin. At first, Mikoyan was involved marginally, and ony in unofficial way.

The design of the new fighter was ready on October 1939.

Its flight performances were expected to be extremely promising: with the AM-37 engine with a power of 1400 hp, maximum speed reached 670 km/h at 7000 m and 531 km/h at the ground level, reaching an altitude of 5000 m in 4.6 min.

Besides AM-37, the installation of the similar AM-35A engine was considered, but Polikarpov considered the AM-37 more promising. First, because it was proposed to supply it with synchronizers for the installation of two guns, and in the second place, the appearance of its 1900 hp derivative AM-39 was expected for late 1941.

Still in 1939, Polikarpov and his bureau had so many projects running at the same time, that he decided to pass Project X to be of exclusive responsibility of a selected team of engineers, that would form the OKO-1

A.I.Mikoyan was assigned as chief designer of OKO-1, alongside M.I.Gurevich and V.A.Romodin.

Mikoyan was appointed formally as assistant of the chief designer on the plant n.1 on December 14, 1939, but the OKO-1 was subordinated directly to Voronin, not to Polikarpov, and had the right to be turned directly to the government for resolution of operational problems.

The OKO-1 received about 40% of the technicians of the Polikarpov bureau, and part of the production team and facilities.

Mikoyan was offered to form his own design team in September too, but he initially refused because of his lack of projecting experience and his strong position on the Polikarpov's team. In fact, he worked as production inspector at Zavod 1 in I-153 series production, and he worked on a commission studying the causes of air accidents; so he had frequent reasons to contact bot designers and production technicians, obtaining great experience and gaining credits thanks to his skills.

He was friend of M.I.Gurevic, then heading the Polikarpov's bureau preliminary design group.

During March the Mikoyan I Gurevic OKB-155 (experimental design bureau) was officially instituted in Zavod 1.

Mikoyan, for respect for his friend and colleague , insisted that the bureau should bring his surname Gurevic aside his own one. In fact, having headed the Polikarpov's bureau preliminary design group of project X, Gurevic could be regarded as the true designer of this aircraft.

The task of the bureau was to develop two variants from the project X: the Izdelye 61 with AM-35A engine, and the Izdelye 63 with AM-37.

On January 21, 1940, these names were replaced by the name I-200.

The war appeared close, and so the government offices gave to Mikoyan the date of July 1st 1940 as a deadline for state acceptance trial; it was a result difficult to achieve, because they had started slowly, and because the Lavockin I-301 and Yakovlev I-26 projects had already months of advantage in development time.

But Mikoyan was an excellent organizer. To gain time, they started immediately to prepare production facilities while simultaneously building the prototypes. They received massive help by production technicians of Zavod n.1. Polikarpov aided the OKB, too; he noted that the production of aft fuselage section, thought for the technology of the Zavod n.21, would meet difficulties at the Zavod n.1.

The development of drawings of I-200 was sufficiently fast. Small corrections into the initial project were made, as:

• for improvement in directional stability, the area of the rudder was slightly increased;
• they shaped the engine cowling on the form of motor, so the oil radiators in the fairings proved to be remote outside, while the control of the air flow rate was made by shutters at the oil radiators inlets, not at the outlet (however, on the second and subsequent versions of the machine they returned to the initial idea);
• the AM-37 engine was still under plant tests; so the AM-35A equipped the first prototypes

The SKF resolution of October 2, 1940, required the increase of the range of new fighters to 1,000 km, at the 90% of maximum speed, measured with fuel contained in internal tanks only. So Zavod 1 was ordered to develop a new version of the I-200 that met this request.

To increase range and to remedy to some other defects, some modifies were made to the original series I-200:

• to increase fuel capacity, a new tank with a capacity of 250 l was installed under the fuselage;
• to find place for the tank, the water cooler was moved aft and replaced with a larger one, now an OP-310;
• both structures were enclosed in a long cowling called karakatitsa (cuttlefish);
• to balance the new tank, the engine mounts were leghtened 100 mm, bringing the total lenght of the new version to 8250 mm instead than 8150;
• the predisposition for external auxiliary tanks was deleted to save weight;
• the dihedral was increased by 1°, passing from 6° to 7° to increase lateral stability;
• the main undercarriages were modified, with new wheels of the size 650x200 mm to support the increased weight of the machine;
• their doors were modified, and the small wheels shields, looking as those of I-16, were replaced by doors hinged under the fuselage;
• the tail wheel was rubberized, of increased diameter, and this required to open a slot in its doors to let it protrude when retracted;
• the tanks were self-sealing.

The prototype of the new version was the I-200 no.04, that was ready for the factory tests on October 21.

It was still 8.15 m long, as earlier prototypes; the increase in length started with series MiG-3s..

It flew on October 29, 1940, flown by A.N. Ekatov.

At the end of November the aircraft was sent to the South to escape bad winter weather for the purpose to conduct joint testing with NII-VVS.

The older version was officially named MiG-1, and the new version MiG-3, according to order NKAP no.704 of December 9; such names were already unofficially in use in the bureau.

The MiG-3, was put into production on 20 December 1940, starting with machine number 2101 (101st series aircraft); the modification created some chaos in the production line, that was already functioning at full rate.

It was decided to build 3500 MiG-3 in Zavod 1 during the year 1941, and to start the production in Kiev, where it was projected to build 100 further MiG-3s during 1941. This latest production line was never started.

After 100 MiG-1 built up to mid December, 1940, Zavod 1 Moscow-Vnukovo produced 20 MiG-3s in late december 1940, and 150 MiG-3s in January 1941.

During February the production increased, and in March it 1941 it reached a rate of 70 per week; by March 28, 473 MiG-3s were built, of which 270 were already sent to operative units.

At that time, they considered producing the new version of the fighter at Zavod No.21 in Gorkiy (now Nizhniy Novgorod) and at Zavod no.43 in Kiev, but this idea was soon abandoned.

Aviation repair depots in Riga were adapted for the MiG-3 maintenance.

When the German invasion came, the MIG-3 was still in development, and that handicapped the aircraft that was hard to pilot at low altitudes and at low speeds. Most MIG-3s were destroyed on the ground and or captures by Operation Brabarrossa, the German invasion. The remaining fighters had the highest surviving rate among allied fighters during the war. When out of ammo, the pilots would just accelerate and climb out of range of the German fighters. The production MIG-3 could reach 710 km/h at 7500 m and 600 km/h at seal level, due to aerodynamic refinements over the prototypes, and refinements done to the wooden sections of the wings.

Development of what would be a great fighter stopped due to the lack of enough quantities of engines. Priority was given to equip the Ilyushin IL-2 Shturmovik, with the Mikulin engine, and MIG-3 production stopped because of that. Also, the Lavochkin OKB was just releasing a new fighter, the La-5, latter La-5 FN and finally the Lavochkin La-7, that ended being the very best aircraft of the war. In good hands she could shoot down the ME-262 Nazi jet fighter, like it was done by Ivan Kozhedub, the highest score allied ace of the war. He was also attacked by two P-51 Mustangs wich pilots "confused" his Lavochkin with a FW-190. He shot both down, and after landing, warned the allied command where the pilots had landed in their parachutes.

[MikeBoyle]

Great job on both the build and the video!