1/48 Italeri Mirage F1C

[Avgas]

Four sprues of grey plastic and a transparency sprue.



Decals by Cartograf. Ten (!) different options.



Some flash on the large joints and a weird sort of scratch mark on one of the fuselage halves, like someone has gone along very heavily with a riveter on the right side of the photo. Luckily the fuselage tank should cover it.



A chunk missing just by the bullet fairing on the fin. Deep joy.



Looks like a simple build, not many parts. Cockpit isn't detailed at all really but it's going to be a canopy shut job. The paint schemes on the instructions (all ten of them) aren't much cop. They are in black and white and the boxes showing which shade to use are all the same tint...

Let the butchery begin!

[Avgas]

Cockpit done, tarted up with some Tamiya masking tape seat belts.





Nosewheel leg glued up.



Dry fit revealed no issues.



Fuselage glued up.





Chunk out of fin filled with TET and sprue filler. Just waiting for it to set.

[Smiffy]

Great work so far That chunk missing from the tail is nasty!

I do like it when you get so many different markings to choose from out of the box.

[Avgas]

Cheers Matt.

Got the exhaust done. It's actually a lot shinier than it looks on the photo. It looks really dull and grotty for some reason on the pic.





Main danglers assembled. Dry fit and all is well. Got some EPM's to scrape off.





Dry fit of the wings reveals a good fit, maybe a smidgen of filler needed but we'll see once they are glued. I may paint the undersides of the wings before I fit them and that's me done for tonight. Time for a long cold one. It's been a really nice kit to build so far, very quick and easy.

[Elve1984]

Nice build so far, wich version are you going to build?

[Avgas]

Don't know, I wish they would just give me one option! It's either going to be version A, B or D, all French Air Force.

[Avgas]

Bit more progress. Got the ali paint on the bits that need it. Wings and tailplane masked up. I forgot to mention, I'm not using any primer at all on this build to see how it goes. One of the guys at the local modelling club who builds pro quality models never uses it.



Got some blue slapped on. It's actually lighter and a lot greyer than it looks in the photos.





Fuselage and wing masking removed. Paint was Model Air 71.062 Aluminium and 71.005 Intermediate Blue. Looks like there's a massive seam underneath the wing/fuselage joint but it's just the way the light is reflecting.





Some better sunshine shots.

[Lysus]

[keithinflorida]

That looks very nice

[Avgas]

Thanks Keith. Pained the radome and glare shield last night and put the jet exhaust on.






Got the stickers on this afternoon, they are absorbing Microsol at the moment. Will give them a day to settle then finish it off.

[Willem]

Beautiful aircraft. Nicely done mate. Something about the Mirage family, all lookers.

[Timmie]

Great looking plane.

What is the kit like?

Grtz Arjan

[Avgas]

Thanks Will. Very good kit, goes together well Timmie. I'm not a rivet counter so can't vouch for the accuracy but it looks like a Mirage F1 to me. It's not over detailed in places like the cockpit or wheel wells but unless you're going to enter it in a competition it's no big deal. There are some EPMs that you need to shift (if you wanted) but other than that I would recommend it.

[Avgas]

She be done. Photos on member's gallery.