Pappy

G'day Ray and Paul, Thanks for the kind words. cheers, Pappy

You cheeky devil! Thanks Grant

Don't be so hard on yourself Graham, your build was an inspiration for my build! p.s If you are going to burn it anyway, can I have you PDT-CT pod cheers, Pappy

G'day Mart, The Mk.82HES (High Explosive Simulated) bombs are painted in a Humbrol colour, I think it was Mediterranean Blue from memory. It is a good approximation for Deep Saxe Blue, which is the official colour. The AIM-9M CATM on the Hawk is painted in Gunze FS36375 acrylic (the same colour as the light grey shade on the Hawk), the GCS (seeker head) is a metallic dark grey, with dark blue decal providing th inert bands. The AIM-9MCATM on the Hornet is painted in the same blue as the MK.82HES with a metallic grey GCS. The rear fins are painted in Gunze FS 36375. cheers, Pappy

Thanks Karl, Pappy

I have been having a few problems trying to log in the past couple of days. These two kits were built a little while back, so go easy. I am posting these to see if everything is working okay, First, the 1/72 Hasegawa F/A-18B plus Hasegawa weapons and Hawkeye decals for 2OCU Secondly, the 1/72 Italeri Hawk 127, also using Hawkeye decals for 76SQN markings. I dropped the flaps as well. cheers, Pappy

G'day Mike, I dunno about 'gold' standard, shiny copper maybe?. There are some very seriously talented people in here! cheers, Pappy

G'day Phil, No worries. I can read Greek so the book is a good source of info as well as markings etc. The fit of the resin pipe would still be better than the kit pipe which sits quite proud of the fuselage. I can see myself buying a couple of the resin pipes for mine. Is is a drop fit or do you have to cut/sand the fuselage for it to fit? I came across this site during my research: http://florent1973.free.fr/FrenchAirWings/...iationindex.htm It is an excellent site for all things French no? I plan for the M2000D to be bombed up with 2 x Magic, 2 x Jugs, a PDT-cCT pod (when Skyraider eventually start production again!) and a dual GBU-22 load. As for the wing root, I was planning to re-drill the recesses, they are there in real life after all. cheers, Pappy

G'day Craig, A very nice cat indeed! cheers, Pappy

Don't be so hasty Graham, you have at least finished yours, mine are still in bits!! cheers, Pappy

Chicken! Seriously though Mish, you should have a crack at it. A lot of my fit issues are a direct result of the warped kit parts. If your parts are not warped, it should not be that bad a build. I mean all you have to do is paint the cockpit tubs grey then glue the pre-painted etch bits. The fuselage needs a wee bit of spreading, also pretty easy, then a wipe of some filler and the kit is nearly done. That is the beauty of the delta's, once the fuselage/wing joint is done, you are nearly done, I think my biggest problem is that I keep finding things to 'fix', but an out of the box build would be a lot easier, cheers, Pappy

G'day Phil, Very nice looking bits of resin. The exhaust in particular looks well executed. To answer you question, no I don't have a large and expensive Mirage 2000 book (in fact I don't even have a clue what book you are referring to!), but I do have a small monograph on the Greek (HAF) Mirage 2000EG/BG that is in full colour and has lots of walk-around shots. It also has Greek text but pictures speak a thousand words. I mentioned the book in one of my earlier posts. It includes some shots of the undercarriage bays. The intake window is not present on the Mirage 2000D/N, though it does feature on the Mirage 2000B, as well as all the Mirage 2000C and EG (HAF single seater) cheers, Pappy

G'day Peri! Thanks for that, coming from you that is high praise indeed. I would be wary of copying my detailing efforts, as I have said, I just put in my version of what I see in the pics, rather than adding every nut and bolt. I try and stretch my modelling skills a little more with each kit. There is nothing wrong with building a kit straight from the box (I just wish I could), but I think if you want to really improve your skills you have to venture outside your comfort zone every now and again. Still, if my build helps someone else to build their kit (or to avoid my fit problems) then that is what sites like this one are all about, cheers, Pappy.

G'day fellas, Thanks very much for the kind words, cheers, Pappy

G'day Phil, I gathered most of my references from the walkarounds page at the Aircraftresoucecenter and Airliners.net websites, in addition to various copies of Airfroces monthly and a Volume of World Air Power journal. Did you try googling Mirage 2000? There are heaps of good pics on the web. How are you finding the Renaissance set? Any chance of some pictures of the set and how it is fitting into the kit? Where did you buy your set from? I was thinking of buying some of their stuff, but it is a little hard to gt in Oz unless you go direct, cheers, Pappy

G'day Bexy, Thanks for the nice words. I like Hueys too, cheers, Pappy

G'day, Here are some pics of my Italeri 1/48 UH-1N in the colours of the 20th SOS. The model was built a couple of years ago now, so I am a little fuzzy about the specifics. I used Cobra Company miniguns with Italeri gun mounts and added a number of small improvements including scratchbuilt load master/crew-chief seats and a gunsight for the pilot. The kit decals (there are not many) came from the box. cheers, Pappy

G'day again, A little more progress on the M2000N today. I have concentrated on the main gear bays. The large doors will be glued shut (as per normal) but there will still be some structure visible. I decided to add a little detail to the gear bay edges. I did not want to reproduce every single nut, valve and wire, instead I wanted to give an impression of complexity. The details added were made from plastic sheet and copper wire. I next turned my attention to the main gear doors themselves. If these are fitted as is, large gaps will result. I suspect that these were not designed to be fitted in the closed position. My solution was to add small plastic card shims to the edges and sand these down until a good fit was achieved. These doors close flush normally but I have noticed in pictures that these doors also sag slightly, probably after hydraulic pressure has bled off. I have also added the two cylinders present underneath each "Spirale" chaff unit. Finally, I decided to add a little interest and open up the ground power hatch. There are two plugs, I assume one is for the AC power, and the smaller is for DC power. The AC power receptacle should actually have three prongs instead of two, but that was beyond my skills. I won't tell if you don't!! cheers, Pappy

G'day again, Well work is progressing, albeit slowly. I cleaned up the ASMP (the M2000N's Nuclear missile) and improved it slightly in the process. The moulded on fins are a little thick, and more importantly, the way they are moulded means that there will be a tricky mould step to eliminate into the bargain. I sanded off the ASMP's fins after copying their measurements. This meant that the filling and sanding was easier. The ASMP's air intakes are also very crudely represented, being overly thick. Instead of thinning the intake area down, I made some FOD guards using plastic card. The missile usually has these fitted when on the ground in all the pictures that I have seen. I have just about finished sanding the wing root seam. It took a couple of putty applications, and I still need to re-scribe some areas, but it is pretty much done (yay!!). I also added the "Spirale" chaff ejector units into their wing root fairings. These are missing some detail out of the box. The underside features a small step which houses two cylinder like tubes and a couple of little fins. I sanded in the step and will add the tube details next, however I will leave of the triangular fairings until the end. Meanwhile, work on the M2000D has been quite slow. I have opened up the slat actuator slots in the wing leading edge. In the pics, I have only done the one side so that you can compare the before and after, but both sides are now done. The tricky part now will be to fill the leading edge area so that I can sand in the correct profile, then I have to make some slats, oh joy.... cheers, Pappy

G'day again, A little more progress. The M2000N is pulling ahead now. I have been busy filling the various sink marks on the fuselage. These appear in three spots on both my kits, namely the lower rear, the lower nose and on the upper fuselage spine just behind the rear cockpit. Nothing major, but still annoying. I have also attached the wing assembly to the fuselage and glued on the intakes. The fit of the splitter plate/shock cone section was fine, all the locating holes lined up well etc, however when the intakes themselves were added, a gap resulted on both sides. At first I thought that I may have glued the intakes too far forward, but the lower wing trailing edge was firmly butted up against the lower fuselage portion, and the wing root seam with its cut outs all looked fine. I think that to solve the problem, the front edge of the lower wing needs trimming back. In any case I decided to add plastic card shims to close the gaps. The final area of concern is the wingtips. I noticed that when dry fitting, the outer corners of the lower wing sections did not sit flush. After some judicious thinning, the problem was remedied. The lower elevon halves are moulded with the upper wing sections. There is also a noticeable step between the lower flap section and the elevon. After the wing halves had been glued, i took to these with a set of files. Eventually, the elevon and flap were flush. Oh yeah, the resulting gap between the two flight controls was a tad deep so this was sanded and re-scribed, and the upper wing flap/elevon engraved line doesn't line up with the lower wing seam, so the filling killed two birds with one stone- result! Meanwhile, over on the M2000D bench, I decided to try and replicate the mesh type cloth shrouds that live on the instrument panels and replace the front instrument panle glare shields with thinner items. I had sanded off the front instrument panel glare shields at the start of the build. Apart from appearing overscale, I didn't think that they would line up very well with the moulded on instrument coamings anyway. I used some foil that I had saved from some Easter eggs. It has a very fine textured appearance that would be brought up nicely with a little dry brushing. cheers, Pappy

Thanks fellas,

G'day Copey, a very nice effort, especially so considering the hiccup at the start. One point concerning the ordnance though. The Laser Guided Bomb Guidance Control Units (LGB GCU's or "seeker heads") don't have a yellow band on them. Yellow bands signify high explosive content. The GCU's have a different sort of propellant which is classified as a low explosive, therefore they have a brown section (similarly missiles have brown bands to denote the rocket motor section) painted between the fin area. I thought that you might like to know this for the next time, cheers, Pappy

G'day again, Work continues at Dassault's Oz depot. I have made some inroads on my Mirage 2000N. The fuselage had toothpick spacers added and the upper fuselage spine was glued. here is a comparison shot of the N versus the D (which has the spacers installed), a quite large gap existed at the wing root. The spacers were added and the fit checked constantly. In the meanwhile, the nose gear bay inserts were detailed. The N did not get as much attention as the large door obscures the major part of the bay, so need to get too carried away. The D had a little more wiring and plumbing added however. The bays were then simply slid into position beneath their respective cockpit tubs. I found that the N's gear bay would not sits square, not doubt due to the warped fuselage parts. I added some shims using plastic card until the bay insert sat square. I have also dry fitted the flap/elevons to the wing, and added the Spirale chaff fairings at this point. I also decided to plug the various antenna locating holes in the fuselage using some plastic rod. I will be replacing the various probes and antennas with my own items as the kit items appear overscale. There is also a mould step at the front just aft of the radome seam that needs to be dealt with. I hadn't noticed it until Greg ("Lg") pointed it out (thanks mate!) in a previous post. This seam is best dealt with early on Sometimes, I think we get a rush of blood to the head, and in my case I decided it might be 'fun' to portray the slats deployed whilst the gear was retracting. I cut out the slats after the wing halves were glued. Despite taking care, I managed to cut through the upper portion. I thought that I would be clever and glue the leading edges together and thus clean up the leading edge seam. This was a good theory, however in practice I think that it would be easier to cut the upper and lower portions apart before gluing the wing halves. More work....... cheers, Pappy

Well, I may have done this once or twice before.... Pappy G'day George, I have just figured out how to open the pictures, so I am downloading them as I type, thanks again, Pappy

Yes thanks very much! I am after pictures of the wheel bays. I know the large main gear doors and the large nose-gear door are normally closed on the ground and that they normally open when the gear is cycled, but I want to depict the "D" on take-off with the gear in mid retraction. For this reason I need pictures of what is beneath these large doors. The "N" and the "EG" will be in a static pose, so these doors will be shut, Pappy