With the coming of jet aircraft, many nations realized that they needed a dedicated conversion trainer to give the needed turbojet experience to both the new pilot and the experienced veteran who was converting to the type.

This all started with the Germans during WWII who developed the two seat Me-262B. It was carried on by the British who developed trainers from their Vampires and Meteors. The US turned the F-80 fighter into the somewhat faster T-33. All these first generation jet trainers served for a long time, with the T-33 probably being the longest lived of the batch.

This need was not lost on the Soviets who did a similar thing with their MiG-15 fighter. Adding another seat gave them the MiG-15 UTI two seat trainer. This version was used by dozens of air arms around the world and challenges the T-33 with being in operation for the longest period of time. Thousands of Soviet and other pilots learned to fly jets with the MiG-15 UTI and many are still in the air today, some at the hands of happy war bird owners.

In line with the other kits in this series, you get a very nicely engraved panel line kit that provides you a great basis for a nice little model. No cockpit detail or even a hole is provided so you'll either have to scratch-build one or you can paint the space black. The kit provides nicely done, though a bit over-scale set of landing gear. In fact, the sprue with the landing gear and drop tanks is identical in all of their MiG-15/17 kits. In this case the only difference I can tell between this and the single seat MiG-15 is the canopy. Frankly, it may take a bit to make a convincing two seater by just supplying a new canopy, but one really never knows until the kit is finished.

Instructions are quite adequate for a kit of this type and there are markings for five aircraft. All are unpainted aluminum and you have markings for a Czech, Finnish, Russian, Polish and East German machine. The decals supplied with these kits are quite good and it is really nice to have all these options as aftermarket bits are not done for these small military jets. Based on my recent build of the MiG-17F, you'll find this one to be a pleasure to construct.