mirageiv

Thanks guys, glad you are liking the WIP. I usually break off my Master pitot probe at least once during a build and well no exceptions here I'd inevitably do it again with all the masking needs for the paint job so instead I decided to cut off the tip of the Modelsvit IIIE nose to rebuild the tip and use the kit pitot ( the diameter is more true to the real thing after all) that I will simply glue on at the end. I ended up combining the Master tip and kit pitot (still needs a bit of blending) to get the best of both worlds. I've been looking forward to the painting as I've not really had a proper bash at a NMF before using Alclads. Looking at photos of the early Mirage IIIS deliveries the fuselage area and vertical fin seem to be relatively shiney, check out the reflection of the wing in the vertical fin in the photo below (Linked from this mc-one thread: https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/73589-mirage-iiis-swiss-air-force/page/5/) The only Alclad paints that can really do this imho are the 'High shine' ones, my favourite for this is 'Highly Polished Aluminium.' This paint however is quite fragile (I've done quite a bit of testing) and masking over it seems touch and go, because of this I will paint these bits last and do all the other various painting first in order to avoid masking it. This started with the fin antennae, The Mirage IIIS could use the SEPR rocket for interception and this required the surrounding panel to receive protective paint, looking at the pictures I went with a yellow/green/tan shade. I haven't modelled the rocket engine here but it would be quite nice to add that in a larger scale build. The differences between the Mirage IIIS with other variants continues even with the painting of the red intake trim, it extends and fills into the intake splitter plate area (see this pic https://www.airfighters.com/photo/230277/M/Switzerland-Air-Force/Dassault-Mirage-IIIS/J-2305/). The Matterhorn decals provide this red trim but I don't have much confidence in my decal trimming abilities in this scale tbh so I opted to paint it instead. The red colour compared to the rest of the Matterhorn decals, I hope it will be close enough. After these areas were masked up (with difficulty on the red trim!) I decided to start painting with the basic more durable Alclads, so everything metallic bar the shiney areas. Before this I sprayed some gloss dark blue over various panels as a base for the Alclad Aluminium. After a base layer of Aluminium various other Alclad shades were used on the different panels using quite a few pics as a guide, no jet seems to be absolutely identical but similar. The masking required has not been a small amount tbh but doing little bits here and there slowly buildings up the differing panel finish. I've finished all the small panels now so just the wings to do with normal Alclad before the 'High Shine' Alclad. I'm finding it a bit difficult to get the correct shades right, these Alclad paints change hue quite a lot depending on the lighting and angles you look at the model and some seem to be very dependant on the base colour underneath. For example the small panel below is aluminium and the surround 'dark aluminium' but the contrast doesn't seem to be enough here, more work needed! After I've finished the wings I can do the more polished fuselage surfaces, I think I need some more masking tape! Thanks for looking, David

Fantastic work Eero on these F-104s, the SEA camo looks brilliant, I'm loving this whole thread really! Hmm I'm sorry about the canopy not arriving yet, I posted it on the 2nd via Airmail so not sure what the hold up is, and of course the Finnish postal service goes on strike to help things out! 🙄 David

Cheers Glynn and Andre! The Modelsvit canopy fitted pretty well but I wasn't sure if it would look the part under a NMF and went ahead blending it in. The downside is there is next to no wiggle room in sanding the fames so I lost a little framing near the front, I'm hopping though to apply a few more layers of Mr.Surfacer primer near the front to build up a bit of frame, I'm not sure it will work we will see. After sanding and polishing I brushed on a layer of Klear to help bring it back. I added the two little disc antennae mounts forward of the canopy which Modesvit has supplied some tiny etch ariels to go on. There should be some more little details for the cockpit frame like the compass to go here but after the painting, The various lights have been sprayed with Tamiya red/green clear so now I think ready for paint. Thanks for looking, David

Thanks chaps, glad you are enjoying the WIP! Hopefully updates should be more frequent now until completion. Cheers Mike, the kit OOB is so intricate (I think the most by a good margin I have ever seen in this scale) you have to be really careful in building it (it has been quite challenging tbh), especially since this will be a NMF. IIIS, F-1EQ and IV are my fav from the Dassault line , oh and Rafale and IIIB and..... well most of them! David

Thanks Col! Finally an update guys! First up, trying to make the PJ IIIS nose fit the Modelsvit kit. I have all the Matterhorn Swiss Mirage decal sets (I really like these Swiss Mirages btw) and in the 1/32 set there are some very nice drawings of the specific Mirage IIIS nose shown below. It is longer than the IIIE variants for the special TARAN radar and is probably the biggest difference in terms of modelling we need to consider. I scanned and scaled these drawings to the Modelsvit 1/72 kit and compared to see what I had to do. These photos have some camera distortion so must be taken which a pinch of salt how they line up. As you can see there is a noticeable profile difference between the kit and the PJ nose, I guess the PJ kit series have a slimmer nose profile than Modelsvit. The real Mirage IIIS has a a nice curvature in the transition between the fuselage, across the nose until the pitot tube. Because of the step shown above and the scribing needed inevitably after sanding I didn't want to use filler here, I'm sure a noticeable 'kink' in profile would have been the result so instead I added a plastic spacer ring to help the transition in profile. Also the nose seemed a little tad short in comparison to the drawings so it helped add a little length. The radar cone bolt holes, used for folding the cone in the tight Swiss Mountain hangars and the hoist holes were filled with sprue as these were all in the the wrong place now, as well as the panel lines being filled with Zap a gap. I made the fuselage rivets deeper around this area so they would survive the sanding. After blending and contouring (it took a while, about 4-5 primer check layers) I then re-scribed the panel lines again slightly further rear and drilled all the necessary holes using the Matterhorn drawings and close up images of the details. Some of the scribing needed was beyond my templates so small templates from plasticard were made, they worked quite well tbh but a bit delicate. This is what I'm going for below, (Image very kindly allowed for use by Robert Schneidier of MC-ONE). From this great thread over on LSP: https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/73589-mirage-iiis-swiss-air-force/page/4/ The final nose profile I settled on below, It is a little too pinched IMO, but this is because I used a Master pitot here which is little thinner than reality. It does give better strength and detail and it is also a little longer matching the drawings better. Also having the Aero48 resin nose for the Kinetic kit at hand helped in getting the right shape. As the Modelsvit kit is an IIIE OOB with the doppler radar under the forward fuselage, all the details around the very forward underside had to be scratched. After scribing the correct panels, the thin cover over where the doppler radar should go was scaled from dimensions from the Kinetic 1/48 kit and added via plasticard. Foil would have been a good bet here in terms of thickness but the last thing you want with an Alclad paint job is paint flaking off foil and all the headaches that would could come about fixing that. This was then blended in and further small details added in this area, The intakes of the kit have a longitudinal seam line due to the breakdown (and some tooling faults on top) that was a bit annoying to sort out but I got there in the end. The intake shock cones received a few different Alclad shades and then a semi-matt clear layer, even only masking a few panels like this made me realise how much of a masking marathon this NMF will be! The ailerons and flaps of the IIIS seemed to be slightly dropped most of the time so I set about modifying this. The kit has no provision for dropped surfaces so you need to do plenty of cutting. Before this I forgot I added some rivet lines that were missing for some reason on the top panels of the surfaces, to be consistent more than anything. I thinned the trailing edges a little too for scale. I added a thin strip of plasticard to the front of the dropped surfaces to make up for the 'extra surface' needed when the drop, this was then sanded very carefully so that the surfaces could be butt joined at the correct slightly depressed angle. Trying to do a proper representation of dropped control surfaces here using semi-circular rod was beyond my abilities in this scale as scribing a receptive V-notch into the wing would be very difficult, careful enough sanding I think has given a similar impression. The actuators underneath the wing were cut where appropriate and slightly sanded to the correct angle to facilitate the drop. Finally some little hinge slots were cut into the hinge line that are quite noticeable on the real jet, see this image: http://master194.com/photo_avion/mirage3-suisse/pages/fuselage-details08_jpg.htm The result. They are roughly lined up here and I'll glue them at the end because the inner flap is very delicate. The Mirage IIIS and IIIRS had four hoist hooks located at the wing root for manoeuvring inside the mountain hangars and the panels around the wing root had to be scribed slightly different here, I haven't added them yet however to avoid damage. I did a little work on the fuel tanks, namely filling in the lines as they were a bit clunky compared to the rest of the kit, re-scribing these finer and sharpening the tips, they are super pointy! After joining the forward fuselage to rear fuselage/wing assembly something seemed a little 'off' with the shape. I compared the kit to some reputably accurate drawings and I think found the wing sweep is not quite sharp enough, making the wing join at the forward root a little too far back thus making the intake area a little too extended, Maybe it was the drawings? I then scaled the drawings and compared to the Heller and Kinetic 1/48 wings. The Heller wing was almost a perfect match with a sharper sweep than Modelsvit. The Kinetic wing has the same sweep as Heller but a smaller span and inner flap width, Given the other two kits match up and just looking by eye there is something. We are not talking major shape errors here but little discrepancies for sure, the Modelsvit wing problem isn't so obvious with casual looking but imho it isn't quite right. I think the Heller 1/48 Mirage IIIC/B kit, whilst old, it still the best representation of the subtle curvature of the Mirage III in 1/48 with the best 'coke bottle' area ruling of the fuselage and wing camber. The upper surfaces of the Mirage IIIS wings had slightly different panel construction compared to the Mirage IIIE but I will not modify it in this scale, as I said before on this kit when you start sanding anywhere replacing the surrounding rivets and details is very difficult and I do not want to make lots more work for myself tbh! Off topic for this thread but I did the basic cuts for a kit-bash from the best parts of the Heller kit (fuselage and wings) and the best/necessary parts of the Kinetic (ATAR-C exhaust, fin, forward fuselage, ventral tank etc...). This will be another Mirage IIIS using the Aero48 upgrades and Matterhorn decals but for another day, the parts fitted really well! Back to model making I cut off the rudder, thinned the trailing edge, sanded the visible slots above and below and added a bit of actuator detail, A general shot, I've been working on the Maestro HM-55 missiles on and off for a while. They are not overly accurate but will have to do, the fins did not fit so well either and required 3 filling and sanding/priming attempts, this was very tricky sanding the cyano glue around very soft resin and thin etch tbh in this scale but mostly there now. They need some details adding like the launch lugs and how they adapt to the launch pylons. Speaking of which I used the Aero48 1/48 scale resin ones to take dimensions and make some 1/72 plasticard versions. They are just basic shapes at the moment and need panel details added. They will go on like so, The cockpit IP and cover glued in, looks nice and snug in there. I've polished up the Mr.Surfacer primer, washed the model and it is now ready for the final front canopy part to be added and blended in, then I think I can get on with applying some paint. Masking this should be a ball! Thanks for looking and for any input as always, David

Fantastic build Werner, I really like it, especially the weapons load! David

Awesome job on the seat! David

Hi Serge, sorry for the long delay, I missed this! I have not published the article because it is someone else's work so I doubt it can be published here without consent by the author, I think he is a member here however; https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/profile/5878-jpp/ . See this thread: In other news, I've mostly finished construction of the kit and will do an update soon so hang in there those following . It has been a seemingly endless loop of priming, scribing, filling (in any order)...the surface details of the kit are so fine, replicating them again after sanding suitable for a NMF has been mildly difficult! David

Hi Serge I have used drawings taken from this thread on LSP: https://forum.largescaleplanes.com/index.php?/topic/73589-mirage-iiis-swiss-air-force/page/5/ They are copyright so I will not post them direct. I not one who usually trusts drawings 100% but like to compare to photos and other kits mainly. That is why I mention the Heller 1/48 kit matches these drawings, the Kinetic 1/48 IIIS has the same wing sweep also (though smaller wing span) but the Modelsvit kit does not match up the same.

Just a brilliant F-104 Craig, the subtle weathering/finish and slick stores fit really compliment it imho, bravo! I really like the first shot in particular, ok so maybe the Kinetic kit is an improvement in some areas but shape wise the Hasegawa still looks very convincing to my eye. David (who still hasn't glued his RF-104 together yet!)

Hi guys I am currently building this kit, overall it is pretty good but I have noticed one possible error in the wing shape that maybe somebody here with accurate drawings can help confirm. I'm using drawings myself that match perfectly to the Heller 1/48 IIIC/B (and mostly to the Kinetic IIIE which has its own wing errors) which is as I understand by those 'in the know' considered the most accurate profile of a Mirage III in model form. Anyways after scaling down the drawings to 1/72 and the wingspan of the Modelsvit kit, the Modelsvit wing seems to be not swept enough. In that the the forward wing root hits the fuselage too far rear from the intake front, making the intake area froward of the wing root look stretched. Even not using drawings and comparing it to the Heller kit and photos by eye it does seem a little off in this area. I'm not here to slate the kit but more offer improvement to the future re-tool of the IIIE and further IIIB models, if there is in fact an error I'd rather let Modelsvit know now than after the release as the rest of the kit has some very good points. David

Beautiful work on your F-104! The cockpit and fabric look brilliant. If it isn't too late, I have a spare front canopy for the Italeri kit, you can have it if you want. Best regards, David

Cheers Craig for the info, how heavy a layer do you brush on? Or is it a case of multiple very thin layers to avoid the brush marks? (I'm rubbish at brush painting ) I think I might try this technique over a NMF because spraying Klear/Aqua gloss never works out so well for me and using more 'hot' clear layers might affect the Alclad.

Damn that looks good Craig, I look forward to it completed! What did you use for the gloss layer? It looks flawless. David

Wow Andy that is a real beauty, the mixed metal/dayglo finish is perfectly done! David

Yes! Here is my WIP thread so far to prove, more to follow eventually: I have an F-16A in progress and completed also an F-16B in the linked thread. Both use the Tamiya Block 50 as the base kit with Revell donor parts, the F-16A backdated to Block 5/10 standard and the F-16B to Block 15. The F-16B was in the end considerable work and in hindsight I would just use the Revell kit in the future. Imho the best kits by a very good margin are Tamiya and Revell for their shape above anything else, they simply look the most Viper like of any 1/72 offering to my eyes. The Hasegawa kit to me has always looked slightly off forward of the intake in the nose and how the LERX blends with the forward fuselage, it is all too rounded IMO. When I compare to photos the Revell kit captures the front end look of the Viper better than Hasegawa, yet Tamiya is the best and a big part of that is due to it having a proper bubble shaped canopy. Also the Hasegawa F-16B canopy and cockpit length is noticeably shorter than the Revell F-16B. If we take the Tamiya kit as pretty much as accurate as we need to be, the Revell F-16B parts fitted almost perfectly to the Tamiya kit suggesting that the Revell kit is very close to the Tamiya and therefore accurate. Plus again imho the Revell F-16B captures 'the look' better than Hasegawa. I think the Hasegawa kits are still ok kits, just not as good as Revell. If you are prepared to add some refinement to the surface details on the Revell kit you will get something very close to the Tamiya standard, but the Tamiya is the number one in most respects bar variants. Cheers, David

Awesome paint job Craig, the SEA scheme does look good on the 104 for sure and the worn fading between the greens looks very good indeed. Also, I hope your son gets fighting fit again ASAP! 👍

A rare subject to see in model form and what a superb result! The snow diorama base sets off the scene perfectly, really well done. David

I think the best F-104 I have ever seen, it looks at least 1/32, extraordinary! David

Cracking build Rich, the amount of mod work you have done to this whilst making it look so easy is very impressive! David

Beautiful paint job Collin, the colours and intricate post shading looks spot! I have a few of these new AK colors also, to me they seem to be very similar to Tamiya but with very good proper FS etc..matches. David

Great work Werner, I really like the heat staining on the exhaust in particular! David edit....how did the Reskit exhaust fit? I am thinking of getting one.

What a fantastic pair of F-4s, seriously well done! David

Murph, Tony, thank you for your help, very much appreciated! Given the options I think I will just persevere with the Maestro versions with a few rounds of delicate filling/sanding on the fins, awkward but probably still the least difficult option. Thanks guys, David

Hi guys Is anybody aware of a kit or weapons set that includes Aim-26B missiles in 1/72? I have the 1/72 Maestro resin ones but after attempting construction I'd rather try obtain plastic versions if possible, the etch fins in the Maestro set are a poor fit and trying to assemble the little things is proving a tad difficult. Thanks for any help or suggestions, David