Club member, Pablo Bauleo shared photos of his latest build: a J-7B converted to an Iranian F-7A, featuring an eye-catching sand and celestial blue camouflage pattern topped off with Iranian markings. The moment he stumbled upon this unusual paint scheme, he knew he had to make it happen. If you’re thinking, “Wait a second—that looks like a MiG-21,” you’re not wrong, says Pablo.

The story behind this aircraft is a fascinating tale of reverse engineering (and ignoring licensing agreements). China reverse-engineered the Soviet MiG-21 into their own J-7 series, a small number of which were exported to Iran as F-7s. Iran then took things a step further—reverse-engineering the F-7 to create their F-7A “copycat”. These aircraft featured British and Italian avionics, reportedly supplied so that Western nations could monitor what Iran was flying—rather than letting Chinese tech take the lead.

As for armament, the Iranians fitted the jets with Matra 550 missiles, which were originally French designs but manufactured in China. The result? A frankenjet with limited capabilities—primarily used as point-defense interceptors around airbases, in daylight and fair weather. With current events and aging airframes, it’s doubtful any of these are still serviceable today… if they ever truly were.

Kit & Conversion Details

For this build, Pablo started with the Trumpeter J-7B kit, which offered crisp surface detailing and a solid fit. To bring it closer to an F-7A, he made the following modifications:

• Swapped in a conversion canopy (a lucky eBay find)
• Relocated antennas and probes to match Iranian layout
• Added spare Matra missiles from a couple of Mirage kits
• Used decals from deep within the dungeon (aka his stash)

While Trumpeter does offer a J-7A kit—which would have made things simpler—Pablo already had the J-7B on hand. So, a little surgical work was in order. The canopy’s shown open in the photos… you might guess why.

Picture Imperfections

Pablo notes one small hitch: the photos didn’t quite nail the focus (we all know what a perfectionist Pablo is). “The front half is crisp, but the tail section got blurred due to a poor f-stop setting. I’ll be retaking the pictures soon to better showcase the full model in all its point-defense glory.”

We think your model looks great Pablo, thanks for the historical insight and your modeling enthusiasm!