Dassaut Mirage F.1 CE/CH - 1:72 Special Hobby

[Julien]

Dassault Mirage F.1 CE/CH
1:72 Special Hobby

 

The Dassault Mirage F.1 has been a successful point defence fighter for over thirty years, and was developed initially as a private venture by Dassault as a replacement to their ageing Mirage III fighters. It is a single-engined, single-seat fighter aircraft with a high-mounted delta wing and capability of reaching mach 2.2 in short order. Power was provided by a single SNECMA Atar turbojet providing about 7 tonnes-force (69 kN; 15,000 lbf) of thrust. Dassault soon found an eager customer in the shape of the French Armée de l'air, who bought various versions over the years starting on 1974. The French retired the Mirage F.1 in 2014.

The F.1 was an export success, going to ten nations; Ecuador, Iraq, Libya, Morocco, Greece, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, South Africa, and Spain. The F.1 is still in service with four nations, with only Morocco being an original customer. Gabon has aircraft passed to it from South Africa, Iran operates aircraft which flew there to escape the 1991 Gulf War, and the new Libyan regime operates an unknown number. Some refurbishment of the Libyan machines was underway when the civil war broke out as evidenced by the two aircraft which defected to Malta. Now France had agreed in 2012 to refurbish the rest of the aircraft.

The Kit
This is a superb new moulding kit from Special Hobby. The parts are crisp with engraved panel lines deep enough not to disappear under a coat of paint, but not trench like. From the parts break down on the sprues it is evident more versions are on there way. Construction starts conventionally enough in the cockpit area. The instrument panel and coaming is built up and attached to the front of the cockpit, the rear bulkhead is attached, and the control stick added in. For some strange reason step 3 in the instructions has you placing the cockpit inside the fuselage and closing it up; and step 4 has you adding the front wheel well and exhaust into the fuselage. I would safely say that it's best to reverse these. On the subject of the exhaust, it is a three part affair and the quality of the kit parts is very good. Once the exhaust, front wheel bay, and cockpit are in the main fuselage can indeed be closed up.

 

 

 

Once the main fuselage is together the correct nose can be added for your chose decal option. Various nose antenna are added along with the front airbrakes which are moulded in the closed position. The engine intakes are also added at this stage.

 

 

 

 

Next the main wings are added which are of conventional upper/lower construction. Once these are on the rudder, tail planes, and ventral strakes are all added as well.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the main aircraft is built it is time to switch to the landing gear. All three units are built up and added along with their respective doors. The undercarriage is quite detailed but has been moulded to be in as few parts as possible. The main legs along with their retraction struts are one part, with only a single small section needed for each of the mains. The wheels are one part each and have nice relief for painting.

 

 

 

It is then a quick re-visit to the cockpit to build the ejection seat. For the scale this is quite detailed with 4 parts making up the seat. There is a choice of seat back/cushion however no indication of which to use for which option. It is suspected these options are time frame based, and the modeller should check their references.

 

 

 

 

The penultimate step is to add the pylons. A single centre line pylon is added along with wing pylons, chaff dispensers and wing tip pylons (all these being in resin). Thankfully this time the instructions show which should be added for each decal option. The instructions show only fuel tanks to be attached, although the sprues do contain a nice selection of French weapons to be deployed as the modeller sees fit,. Lastly the canopy and front screen are attached.

 

 

 

 

Decals
The decals are printed by Cartograf so should pose no problems, The are crisp, in register and look colour dense. Five marking options are provided in this boxing;

 

 

• 14-40 Spanish Air Force 14th Fighter Wing, Los Llanos AB. Camouflaged aircraft.
• 462-18 Spanish Air Force 462nd Sqn "Falcons". Blue Grey over Aluminium.
• 11-04 Spanish Air Force 11th Fighter Wing. Purchased from Qatar in 1997 and left in original dessert camo..
• 128 Sqn Royal Moroccan Air Force, Sidi Slimane AB.
• 175 Sqn Royal Moroccan Air Force, Sidi Slimane AB.

Conclusion
This is a great new tool kit of an important French Aircraft which enjoyed export success. Very highly recommended.

 

 

 

 

Review sample courtesy of

[Julien]

Just a quick note from Special Hobby that some of these kits have unfortunately left them without the two resin wing tip missile rails.

If yours is one of these then please contact them and they will get them out to you. These are only for the first two Spanish options.

Special Hobby

21/3 às 14:05 ·

IMPORTANT!!!

All the customers who already got their Spanish Mirages - unfortunately our collegue made a mistake and there are PUR parts missing! Please, all of you who found out that - write an e-mail to [email protected] so we can fix it.

Thank you and please accept our apology.

[Antoine]

Point defense fighter?

Delta wing?

The weapon sprue doesn't offer French weapons only, there's a pair of Kukri, and some GBU

[upnorth]

Worthy of note is that the styrene seats supplied in the kit have no indication of belts on them and there's no etch included to represent them.

If you want a seat with belts, you'll have to buy the resin ones that Special Hobby makes available separate from the kit or some other aftermarket option.

[bad edd]

...or you can go and get the fantastic Barracuda MB4 seats (albeit designed for BAE Lightning) they are a perfect match for the early F1.

There are incredibly detailed ( even the quite visible rivets), incomparable to any other effort :

http://barracudacals.com/proddetail.php?prod=BR72213

For the later MB10 seat, I would really vote for the Pavla seat :

http://www.pavlamodels.cz/katalogy/detail.php?k=seats&c=S72062&styl=styly.css

The CMK (SH) aftermarket resin seats ( especially the Mb4 ), even with PE harnesses ,look clumsy compared to Barracuda's:

Edited March 31, 2016 by bad edd

[martinBK]

CMK seats are really basic.

Since several export Mirage F-1 are fitted with MB JM6, it's a pity there's no MK6 in the kit (but why 2 MK4 ???).

[bad edd]

MB6 can be sourced from High Planes, not that bad:

http://www.hpmhobbies.com/products/High-Planes-Martin-Baker-Mk-6-Ejector-Seats-x2-suits-Mirage%2C-Buccaneer%2C-MB326-etc-%28Accessories-1%3A72%29.html

But I'm not sure, on which version of F1 was it actually used?

They are two Mb4 in the kit because the same sprue will be used for the two seater, I guess.

Edited March 31, 2016 by bad edd

[martinBK]

No two seater are equiped with MK4 (but MK10 - in the kit- and MK6- not in the kit).

MK6 : Spain, Ecuador, Greece.

[bad edd]

True, thank you for clearing that out !

Now that i started looking more carefully at the pictures, apparently Jordan, Libyan and even earlier Iraqi EQs also had Mk6.

[IGKent]

Great review Julien!

But I'll wait french version....)

[Julien]

True to their word the missing rails arrived in the post from Special Hobby.

Julien

[RAGATIGER]

Hi there

Check your references as the Spanish and Greek Mirages F-1 were armed with Sidewinders AIM-9P

And in wonderful 1/72 scale only the old Airfix kit has the multiple bomb ventral ejector rack

Best day

Armando

Edited April 13, 2016 by RAGATIGER

[Antoine]

Check your references as the Spanish and Greek Mirages F-1 were armed with Sidewinders AIM-9P

Nothing really new there, it's been underscored many times in the Rumourmonger's thread.