>>7383263Well, I've gotten a bit of progress into it, so I guess this may be a good point to continue. Work so far has consisted of gouging out a good bit of the arse (loosing a bit over 10% of the weight), then carving out a lot of material around the cockpit, and finally a few more deep gouges so the engine and dashboard could be squeezed in. Then some more filing in the arse and all in all a bit over 20% of the fuselage has been turned to dust. Then I stuffed in about 2.5g of lead in the nose, and filled in with some glue to get even more weight there.
Now then, let's get to the story. The first root for it goes back to the Swedish air force looking for a new primary trainer. Malmö flygindustri (MFI) decided to enter the competition and sent a few aircraft in for testing. Said testing done and over with the air force decided to buy Scottish Aviation's Bulldog, and so MFI stood there with a few gently used extra aircraft they wanted to sell to someone else in a hurry.
The other root goes back to the independence of Nigeria. Being yet another of those colonial constructs that lumped people together with no concern for ethnicity, religions, or anything at all really. So upon the Brits leaving civil war didn't take long as the oil-rich Southeast part declared independence as the nation of Biafra. As always a number of non-local interests also got involved. The old colonial power, Britain, supported the federal government heavily, mostly with ammo and armoured vehicles (while denying it did anything much like that), in order to ensure that BP would keep pumping cheap oil out of Biafra. The USSR saw an opportunity to gain influence down in Africa, and also supported the federal government by supplying them with Mig-17 and Il-28 aircraft. These would mostly be flown by mercenaries, plenty of which were WWW2 RAF veterans (some English, others from eastern Europe). France thought some inroads into ex-British territory could be nice, and so gave Biafra a little help.
