kiseca

Very nice! I've got their 1/72 Blinder next in the queue on my stash. How did you do the panel wash? It's very neat and crisp, did you do a pin wash to bring the panel lines out?

I am now 30% through Duncan Campbell's Jet Man, the story of Frank Whittle's struggles to build a working turbojet. It's an interesting, well detailed read so far. It feels a bit biased towards Frank rather than being a neutral viewpoint, but it's probably fully deserved. If it felt more neutral it might well be less accurate. Just finished Conn Iggulden's The Gates of Athens, which I found to be at about his normal standards and I'll be reading more of the series. Before that, I read the final book in The Expanse. Thoroughly recommended series for anyone into sci-fi.

I use Tamiya fine primers (light grey and white) on most of my models, so I've gone through a few cans of it now. I find, as others have said, the biggest challenge is not putting too much paint on the model, because it comes out of the can really fast, but otherwise I've always found it really easy to use and the end result has always been a good smooth finish to apply the colour coats to, without washing out all of the detail. I get the occasional run when I'm just not moving the can quickly enough, but it seems fairly resistant to that too. Personally, I think the most likely problem is you either got a duff can, or the conditions have really screwed the can up and I've just never happened across those conditions when spraying. I doubt it's a technique problem, and my experience makes me doubt it's a general product problem, so I'd suggest you give it one more chance. Maybe with a can from a different source in case it was a bad batch or a fake or something.

Looks great so far. I'm looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

Great looking Beaufighter.

That's fantastic, especially at that scale. Lovely work.

It will be a boring Johnnie Johnson build for me - I don't have any of the famous aces in a Spitfire model yet. The Popeye and the clipped wing French options are very tempting though. The US scheme has lovely colours too, but for some reason an American Spitfire just doesn't appeal to me. Don't ask me for a logical reason why, I don't have one. But while oddities like French or Polish Spitfires are attractive for me, an American one isn't. Similarly if I had an option with a Mustang, I'd always choose US over RAF.

The camouflage is done! I started with the lighter colour. The pattern on the fuel tank is wavy so I drew the profile on masking tape, cut the tape along the profile and used that to mask the tank. The aircraft masking was a bit simpler, as it is all straight lines. I often use dustbin liner to cover large areas but in this case I just taped everything. I knocked one of the wingtip missile rails off while getting tape on to one of the tighter sections, so I glued that back on and left it a day to set. The next day I knocked it off again... Not wanting to waste another day, I just masked the wingtip edge over instead so I could put the rail back on once the plane was painted. I'm using Vallejo Model Air for the major surfaces, the first time I've used them for large coverage. It's a light colour so unsurprisingly took a few coats to get the colour opaque. I find these paints, which are airbrush ready, a bit thick and I spray them at a much higher pressure than what I usually use. I added some flow improver to help reduce that effect and also delay the onset of tip drying. I am not sure how much difference that made, to be honest, I still had to blast it through, but I had no problems with a clogging nozzle at least. The quality of the finish isn't brilliant. It's like the particles of paint are relatively course, or maybe it's just my technique. Maybe I just laid it on too thick. Either way, the quality has a grainy look to it close up. It's acceptable by my standards on an aircraft and will probably be fine on a tank or something. I wouldn't use it on a model car though. It is also going to make accenting the panel lines more difficult. With the first colour done, i left it for a,week to make really sure the paint had cured well, and then it was time to get the worms in place for the second colour. I prefer using Blu-tak worm for camouflage, it gives a nice crisp border without being as harsh as masked edges, but it does waste a lot of Blu-tak. I have in the past used liquid mask to cover the areas wbetween the worm that I don't want to paint, and it works pretty well but the blu-tak itself is completely unusable afterwards. I can't separate it from the mask and have to just throw it away. So this time I used masking tape. It took a lot longer to prepare, and while I got more of the blu-tak back I still had to throw away a fair bit of it as it was unsurprisingly well stuck to the tape. And of course it wastes a lot of tape. Next time, I will try dustbin liner or paper. These should be easy to separate but I think will make prep time even longer because I'll need to be more careful making sure it is well sealed on to the blu-tak well along all the borders. Or I could cut the masking tape to size, lay it on the surface, then put worms along the edges to give the desired soft border. I forgot to take any photos of the aircraft masked up but I did at least get one of the fuel tank. And here's one of the aircraft covered in worms and with the first coat of brick red on. I expect water based acrylic paints to be more fragile than enamels so I wanted to leave the sticky stuff stuck to it for as little time as possible. Thus I masked it up, painted it immediately, then took the masking off as soon as I'd finished tidying up my workspace and cleaning the airbrush. I also must admit I was really keen to see how it had come out, and I will happily say I'm really pleased with the result. I am glad I picked this livery because the unusual colours give a very distinctive paintjob that really does stand out. Perhaps not a description that would usually be desirable for camouflage, but for my needs, it's perfect. I really, really do like it! There are a few details to add before it can get a gloss coat for the decals, in particular some black paintwork in front of the cockpit and at the base of the tail. Bit that's for the next update. For now, her's how she looks with her camo dress on. Two other lessons for me to take from this. The first is with the wavy borders separating the camo from the aluminium on the tank. I used tape for those but worms where the camo colours meet eachother. It would be a more consistent result if I had used worms all round. In hindsight that seems logical but I just didn't think of it at the time. The other lesson was with the borders. The worms take up space, and mark the boundary with their outside edge. I was aware of this when laying them down but even so, the dark brown areas are a bit smaller than intended in some places. I didn't make enough allowance for the thickness of the blu-tak strips. I am still happy with the result though. It will be a few days before it gets masked up for the black, and then I'll leave it again for at least a week before I gently try get a gloss varnish on it. I've painted up a test piece which I can use first to make sure the varnish doesn't melt the Model Air paint, but other than that, it's on the home stretch now. Just the weapons to get painted, a few details, decals and top coats and she'll be ready to go on the flight line. It will take a while to get there, but most of that time will be waiting for paint to cure or varnish to harden.

That is a beautiful build!

Yeah it's a good kit, especially for its age. It has a few foibles but most kits do. It goes together well, is pretty simple and free of fuss and When I do build another F1 it will be the Esci kit again.

Cheetah never was a pretty aircraft, that's for sure The book I am reading while building that Bye Bye Mirage F1 is quite revealing about the state of the SAAF around that time, and while it focuses on the F1 it does have a fair bit of into about why the Cheetah was built. The F1s were doing fine for air to air combat on the Border war in the early 1980s, scoring a couple of Mig 21 kills, but while the aircraft itself was lovely to fly, the radar was unreliable and the missiles that the SAAF had access to at the time were ineffective. I think both MiG kills were from cannon fire... and by the same pilot. They had no BVR capability, and no head on missile capability, so they flew old fashioned combat tactics, trying to get on their opponent's tail. Then in the late 1980s the MiG 23 arrived in the arena and surprised the F1s by firing missiles at them head on. They damaged one F1 enough that it crashed on landing and was written off. They could also outrun the F1s so could disengage easily if a Mirage did get behind them. The SAAF had no answer to their frontal aspect firing capability. In addition, they did not have effective countermeasures or radar warning capabability. Combine these with better ground radar coverage and the Angolans / Cubans gained air superiority. The SAAF needed better armament and avionics to get back up to date. Sanctions meant they couldn't buy newer aircraft or equipment from anywhere, the F1s were the last military jets they bought until the fall of the National Party in 1994, so they had to do it all in house and upgrade airframes they already had. The F1s would be the first choice but it would ground their front line air defence fleet, leaving them with only the far outdated Mirage IIIs. So they upgraded the IIIs instead, and while they were at it, they tried to improve the III's handling characteristics as well. They were apparently a relatively tricky aircraft to land with a high stall speed and high AofA. Plus, I think they added some fuel capacity. Thus was born the Cheetah, alongside locally developed missiles giving BVR and frontal aspect capability along with stronger electronic defences.

We're nearly all caught up now, so, moving on, the next big decision for me was the camera bulge that sits under the aircraft just forward of the nose landing gear bay. This is another of those parts, like the slats, that feels like a later addition - and it makes sense. The model depicts the CR type, which is quite probably younger than the original kit is. The camera bulge just glues on to the belly of the aircraft. There are no lines, marks or holes to help line it up, you just do it by eyeball. This isn't very difficult as the part has a pointed nose and tail, making it easy to align with the centreline of the fuselage, but it doesn't fit very well. This isn't the only part that feels like a later addition to the kit. Earlier on I mentioned the two strakes, but therr are also two intakes that fit under the fuselage that have no holes, marks or lines to help locate them. They both fit very comfortably on the flat belly with large contact areas for a good, secure join, so it's not a big deal. Overall, I'm still really happy with how well this kit goes together and how secure the joins are. The wings have huge tabs that slide snugly into slots in the fuselage. Those aren't coming off easily, and very difficult to get them misaligned too. The same goes for the elevators, which also have large, long tabs that slide into well matched slots in the fuselage. The downside is you can't pose them in any position except level unless you want to cut them up, but I don't mind that. I've had a few elevators on other models with tiny round locating lugs that have snapped or just don't fit well. More care is needed aligning them, and when they do break, they are difficult to reattach securely. Getting back to the camera bulge: forget the bad fit. More to the point, it's basically a big wart under the chin of my beautiful Mirage, and my big decision was whether or not to attach it and sully the lines or not. It's easy enough to leve off because the fuselage surface detail isn't expecting to be covered by the bulge anyway, so the model would look complete without it. However, it is a CR model, and reconnaissance is one of its functions, so I erred on the side of historical correctness in this case at least, attached the wart and filled in the gaps. When it comes to the horrid looking refuelling probe, however, that crosses the line. It's hideous and it's staying in the box. This can be a short range CR, used for photographing the neighbours or something. The chin wart: That last photo reminds me - the canopy and windscreen also aren't a great fit. I had to use filler in the joins, very carefully to try not to get any water in the cockpit, because I was worried the gap would let spray through and ruin the interior or mist up the cockpit glass. With that done, she's ready to spray! Here are the intake plugs in place. I forgot to add these photos in the previous post. Now on to the paintjob. The instructions say the underside is flat aluminium on the colour scheme I've chosen. Some sources online agree with this, others say it's light grey. I thought the flat aluminium would look a bit more interesting so I stuck with the instructions here... more or less. Instead of flat aluminium, I used Humbrol 11 which I believe is officially labelled silver, but to me it really looks more like a metallic grey. Particularly when, as is the case with my can, it's old and mostly used up. With age it seems to get more grey and less...metallic. I was originally going to use Humbrol 56, which is their idea of aluminium and is even less shiny, but those cans had expired. I did the whole aircraft in this colour. It's enamel, so it can be the underside's colour and simulaneously be the primer for the camouflage pattern on the upper surfaces. That is sand and brick red, and I'll be using water based acrylics for those. An advantage is, if the camo paint chips, it shows metallic underneath. Here she is in my new paintbooth, with her two coats of Humbrol 11 just applied. Her fuel tank, ECM pods and bomb racks were also painted and are visible in the booth too. I added two pylons and the wingtip missile rails to the wings before painting, to ensure I got a good join for those parts. It makes the pylons harder to paint, though, and will make the wing harder to mask when I do the camo colours. We'll see if it's worth it or not. I usually add the pylons after painting. It makes painting easier but then I get a very fragile join and often knock pylons off models while dusting them. Amyway that's now fully up to date. Next comes the sand topcoat.

Continuing with joining the frame, the next bit of preparation was around the dorsal strakes under the exhaust nozzle. I am pretty sure all production F1s had these - I've never noticed one without them - but they feel oddly like they are additions to the kit - modifications to the tools - rather than parts that were originally available. I say this because the unusual locating method is basically two slashes carved into the rear fuselage onto which the surface of the strake sits at the right angle. I hope. The slashes The strakes themselves need some modifying too. They have little detail bumps molded into them, two each side, that look like they could represent joining brackets or something. They do, however, foul on the bodywork and prevent the strake from sitting flush in its slash. So I had to remove them. Strake before surgery Next problem that needed solving was how to mask up those semicircular intakes for the paintjob. I'd usually stuff them full of tissue paper and mask off the borders with tape, but up until now, all the jets I've built has simple and nearly always rectangular intakes. This is the first one with rounded intakes, and more importantly, with a shock cone half-in and half-out of them. Masking those with tape was going to be a very fiddly job with a high chance of getting a bad seal somewhere and having paint runs. I decided the best way would be to fashion some plugs for the intakes, that would be stable during painting, give a decent border, protect the interior paintwork, and be easy both to insert and remove. I started by drawing the semicircular profile on some tape, then sticking the tape on a surplus elevator part I had from a Beaufighter model, and then cutting the part out of that nice slim, flat surface and filing it down to shape and size so they'd fit smoothly into the intake holes. Once done' I rounded off the edges so they'd be less likely to scratch the paintwork. These on their own wouldn't be easy to line up well in the intake, and wouldn't stay in place once in there. One had already nearly been eaten by the engine while I was still shaping them. I needed locating pins to stabilise and secure them as well as locate them depthwise while keeping them flat and parallel compared to the intake mouth. I used some bits of an old sprue to make the legs. The flat end sits nicely nicely on the plug, making a secure glue point with decent contact area. I sanded the opposite sides down to round them off, again to protect paintwork from scratches. Lastly, I needed something on the front that I could grip with tweezers to allow easy installation and removal of the plugs. I had a pair of identical, triangular pieces in my surplus parts box. Goodness knows what they came from, but they are the right size and I have two of them so I can make them both look the same. I sanded down one face to be flat to make a good glue join, and my intake plugs are ready. The legs look at odd angles but that allows them to clear the shock cone's bulge and sit comfortably against the back wall inside the intake. I didn't use any actual intake plugs as references, as these are really masking tools, but once the aircraft is finished, I might throw a dash of red or orange paint at them, stick a few random decal letters and numbers on, and see if they'll make convincing looking intake plugs to display on the model. I might have to reduce the mounting handle size a lot.

Sorry for resurrecting an old post, but recently came across some detail which may be interesting, if by Kfirs you were referring to South African Cheetahs, not actual Israeli Kfirs, anyway, since I believe SAAF Cheetahs were sold to Equador, but I am not aware that any Kfirs were. Anyway, in case you were referring to Cheetahs, while they do closely resemble Kfirs, and while South Africa did have a strong relationship with Israel throughout at least the 1980s, there are a number of significant differences between the two aircraft and someone familiar with them should be able to tell which one they are looking at quite quickly. (I confess, I am not that person.. if you parked the two side by side, without markings, I'd struggle to tell you which is which!) Anyway, finding detail on the internet has been surprisingly difficult but the differences I am aware of are: The two aircraft have different avionics packs, both at least partially home grown and true whether considering air defence or ground attack versions of both. They have different engines. Kfir has the very popular J79, Cheetah has a Mirage F1 engine (Atar 9K50?). Apart from performance, which I am sure would favour the Israeli jet, this has also led to some fuselage reshaping on the Kfir as the J79 is shorter, wider, and needs more air and cooling than the 3's original Atar engine. Both have non moving canards, similarly shaped and located, but they are different sizes. I believe the Cheetahs' are the smaller ones but I could have that the wrong way around. Kfir has a redesigned wing. I believe the leading edge has been reprofiled. Cheetah retained the standard Mirage 3 wing as far as I am aware. Cheetahs - at least most of them - have a new, pillarless single piece windshield similar in shape to that of, say, an F-15. Kfirs retain the standard 3 piece Mirage 3 windshield with two pillars framing a flat pane of glass. Kfir was designed as an upgrade to a Mirage 5, the Cheetahs from Mirage 3s, though of course the 5 is itself a development of the 3. Anyway I hope that's of some interest. I learnt pretty much all of that recently watching a youtube interview with an ex SAAF pilot who flew the Cheetah, so thought I would share it.

I just found this now, didn't realise he'd gone. I'm a huge Depeche Mode fan, sad to hear this.

With the undercart all painted I could join the fuselage halfs and start adding wings, strakes, and other assorted bits. Here again, some preparation work is needed with the intake nozzles. The internal surfaces of these are difficult to paint once assembled so I always paint them before assembly... I assume we all do... but there were three additional challenges in this case. The first challenge is the shape. The intake is semicircular, and the point where the straight edge meets the curved edge on the actual aircraft is rounded. On the model, it's a sharp edge. It's a small detail but I knew it would bug me and there's enough meat in the join so I rounded the edges off. In this pic you can see the left hand edge in the original shape and the right hand edge has been rounded off. The second challenge is that on the inner faces, there are odd gaps between the two parts that make up the nozzle. They are there by design on the kit - it's not a poor fit problem - but i see no evidence of the actual aircraft having gaps in this area, and they will be visible on the assembled model. I filled those gaps (top and bottom) in before attaching the nozzles to the fuselage. With that, the fuselage assembly could be completed to the point where it is ready to paint. Before that was done though, I got to this point in the assembly and thought of an incident described in that book, Vlamgat. In 1985 Captain Holdsworth of the SAAF was engaged in dogfighting exercises in a Mirage F1AZ when, at just short of mach 1, the complete canopy separated from the aircraft with a loud bang. He descended to 200 feet and, once under 200 knots, he could once again hear the radio and declare his emergency. He enjoyed the low, slow ride back to base in his convertible Mirage, saying he was "riding my F1 like a Chevy with the top down." He made the most of the experience, enjoying the open view and finding that at 150 knots he could fly with his elbow on the sill and look out over the side of the aircraft. It seems a nice idea to reference that flight in a model if I could source a 1/48 pilot suitably posed with his elbow on the sill, however I fear it would simply look like I'd lost the canopy part and improvised, rather than faithfully recalling an actual event. Thus I won't be building a SAAF Chevy F1 convertible in the future.

Next up, the front wheel well is formed from a combination of the cockpit floor and the fuselage sides. It has some curves that will make it very difficult to paint once the fuselage halves are joined, so I wanted to paint that wheel well before assembly. While I was at it, the landing gear legs are supposedly the same colour, so I decided to prepare and paint the landing gear assemblies at the same time. Before I got to that, one of this kit's flaws needed to be dealt with on a number of parts. I don't know if it is connected to the kit's age or if it has always been a weakness of the kit, but the ejection pin marks in a lot of places are quite deep and prominent, and are in visible areas. You can see those, and some flash, on the undercarriage parts and wheels in these photos. Main landing gear legs Main landing gear doors Wheels I cleared that up before painting. I got away with sanding the doors and legs but needed to fill the holes in the tyres because they are deep. Here are the wheels ready to paint: With that I was ready to paint the undercarriage bays and parts. I used Vallejo Metal Color paints for this, Aluminium for the majority, silver for the hydraulic arms, and Tamiya flat black for some detail and the tyres. Despite the flash and ejector pin marks, and the odd fitting seat, I was very impressed with the kit up to this point especially considering its age. The parts fit together really well. The cockpit was wasy to assemble and nothing on it feels fragile, and the landing gear legs have mounting lugs so robist that the model can stand on them without needing to glue them in. I find that landing gear legs are often very fiddly to fit and are extremely fragile when done, but these are fantastic.

I am well overdue posting an update on this one. Happily, there has been some progress. I'll break up the posts into milestones to catch up. I started with the cockpit, as always. It doesn't have a lot of detail and the seat / column relative positioning looks a little odd, but it will be closed cockpit so I'm not worried about it. There are two rails on the cockpit's back wall that look like they should fit nicely in between two rsimilar rails on the back of the seat, but the seat detail at the top fouls this so it sits in front of the rails instead of covering them. I don't know if that puts the seat further forward than intended, putting it too close to the column, but the surgery to make it fit would have been very visible so I did not attempt to change it. The instruments are decals, they look OK. Also, I was a bit surprised that most of the interior is black according to the kit instructions, while the cockpit side walls (the inside of the fuselage) are specified to be the more expected grey. Anyway I followed the kit instructions on this occasion. Now, I cannot seem to get images to display when I copy the link from my phone, so I'll need to add those later. EDIT: solved with different browser. Here's the cockpit.

Spectacular level of detail! That's a great looking model.

Looks like if you added some fuel you could start it up! Great work!

Hah, I misread your post, sorry! I read it as you were finished with MRP paints, what you meant was you finished the model with them! Oops

Looks good to me! What was the problem with the MRP paints? I asked a question recently about ready-for-airbrush paints and they were recommended more than once so I'm going to give them a try, so interested to hear your experience?

I can see both sides to that. We're all forming a community here around a shared interest. The models on display on Britmodeller show the standards achievable. Not everyone is to that top standard, but it sets a bar. When I'm admiring someone else's model I'm comparing their skills to my own without making a conscious decision to. I'll see something they've done and think I can't do that but I'd like to try it, or I don't know if I'll ever get to the standard of finish that this person gets around their cockpit frames. Or this weathering looks fantastic, that looks overdone for my tastes, or that model actually would look really good with a bit more weathing or patina here and there. I think I could replicate this, I don't think I could replicate that, I don't want to replicate the other. It's all part of the learning process. Discovering things that are possible and then deciding whether to try add that skill or method to your own experience or not. And then I post my own models on here. I wouldn't do that if I didn't care what anyone thought. I also wouldn't do it if I felt I was miles below the level of what absolutely everyone else is posting. I'd feel out of place. But I post them. Not because I neccessarily want to be critiqued to death, but I want others to see them and it's nice to get outside feedback. It's nice that they're not just hidden away on a shelf where only I, and a family that isn't into modelling, ever see them. It's art, and I've always felt an artist, regardless of skill, isn't an artist without an audience. Art for me is the sharing of ideas, impressions and emotions so that others can appreciate it, whether it inspires them to try new things, encourages them to say yes I can do as well as or better than that so I'm now confident to share my own work, or just gives them pleasure to see how a particular model turned out, or information about the challenges the kit threw at the builder. So yeah, I don't particularly care if someone doesn't like the general lack of weathering my models have (I suck at weathering) or the quality of my joint filling if it's good enough for me, but I do care that people can appreciate bits that they like, or give advice when I say I struggled with this part or that part, because the culture on this site is always encouraging, always positive, and always inclusive. So it works. That makes it an unthreatening place to get feedback It's encouraging, not judgemental, and I like that. I care about the feedback, so I share my models. Yes I have my own standards, but sharing my models and methods on here, and looking at other people's builds, has changed those standards. And that is good.

Thanks! They are easier to see in the flesh / plastic as it were. The photos have been kind to it, but if I'm not looking up close, the faults don't stand out so I'm happy with it.

This one is complete. Wise words earlier about the panel lines from @Paulaero. Thanks for that heads up! RFI thread here: