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Thanks @kiseca, yep those were definitely the golden years, the entire current SA military is in disarray, broke, corrupt and they wouldn't even be able to protect 100 meters of our border, in fact they don't even try, a very large percentage of "citizens" are illegal immigrants from up in Africa, and everything our forefathers faught and died for was for nothing. There's a lot of tension, but I'm not a politician so I'll leave it there. Oh I know those, my father in law had a 2.0! Great cars... Hahaha that's an awesome story! And some things never change, Alexandra is still a no-go, Fords still break down, and we still don't drive 120 😂😂

Thank you Jon! I'd love to find an F1 in this scale and make a stablemate for the III! 😉 Thanks F-32! 😄 Thank you sir! Funny story... After it was all done I was sitting watching youtube and fiddling with a red sharpie and a clear ballpoint pen and started coloring in the clear plastic and it worked so well I put the sharpie in my modelling toolkit! I'll just need to buy a green one and a blue one.. so yes and thank for the tip @Col Walter E Kurtz! 😎 Thank you sir! Thanks SAT69! Appreciate the kind words 😄 Thank you GP2705!

Thank you @kiseca yes, my dad told me he never saw active combat but also only started telling me stories when I was old enough to understand "war".. a lot of the recces has bad PTSD though, but then us men never really talk about being scared at that age. My dad did his training in Swartkop / Waterkloof / Valhalla in Pretoria, and then deployed to 2 Squadron at Hoedspruit in Limpopo. There was a stage he did tower duty shift on the physical border, but I never got the full story, and probably never will. My mom might know more, but she's still grieving so I don't want to push her yet. I think the AFB in Bloem is called Bloemspruit, but I'm not sure if there are others. That's awesome that he became a pilot! I wanted to be one my whole life but we could never afford it, I have co-piloted a microlight though 😋 Hahaha what car did you blow up? That's a funny story! Thanks so much binbrook! Thank you sir! Thanks! 😉 Thanks and nice one with the R2Z! These are smallish birds so I wouldn't be able to get close to this finish in 1:48, and in 1:32 its marginally bigger than my 1:48 Phantom, but if you're doing camo the white tac worms work very well, just watch a few videos because I thought I knew what I was doing but there is a trick to the spray angle. I made the worms match the reference pics and then in between the worms I put down wax paper, and trimmed into the white tac with a scalpel blade and pulled off the excess, took about 2 hours to do the whole thing, so it's not too time consuming. When did your grandfather serve? My dad was very close to a few radar guys in the 80s... sadly I never knew them by name. I'd love to do an Impala in NMF, but I can promise you if I ever find a SAAF kit for sale I will make sure to build it. Thanks for the comments and awesome story @NFR Thanks Julien! Nah mate, just build 2! Thanks for the kind words! Thank you Andy! The reference pics were old photos and I didn't see too much bleaching, they repainted them a few times, so let's just say it was recently repainted 😅 and kept indoors 😂😂

This is awesome! If you ever want vector versions of scanned images or bespoke vector graphics (that are not based on pixels, so can edit the colours / shapes seperately or scale up and down without losing quality, would print out much crisper too) send me a PM, I'm a graphic designer by trade and I think it would save you a lot of headache! Happy to help a fellow artist! 😋

Nope, if I do pilots and figured I want them to look like your BoB figures and that takes more skill than I currently possess. But thank you for the kind advice and thanks for looking sir. I will be looking at your Phantom too!

Thank you Dric! Thanks for looking! 😉 I appreciate that sir! Thanks for looking! Thanks Meatbox! Appreciate the kind words! I too am an avid observer of real ale 😂😋

WOW! What an awesome recollection! This nearly brings tears to my eyes as my dad would tell similar war-tales... I too have sat in the pit but was far too young to remember the details, but my dad took me on many airshows back then and I vividly remember the delayed whoosh when the Mirages were going fast. Now most of the aircraft are dilapidated and the ones on display aren't really being kept nice, in fact some of my reference photos have litter and empty drinks bottles strewn around the display... very sad. My dad flew 2IC in a 2 seater Impala trainer and told me how the whole plane felt like it would fall apart when the pilot ripped the 30mm practice cannon rounds. I still have one of the spent shells from those and use it to store my tweezers and brushes. Your brother must have incredible stories to tell as well... pity they weren't taking recruits, but your friend could have possibly also known my dad.. he worked on the whole fleet, but his favorite was the Mirages, specifically the IIIC... what a small world. I remember a story where he was sitting on the spine of a IIIC working on some electronics in a access hatch somewhere aft of the pit, and it was drizzling - slippery, so he had one hand in the wiring and the other hand behind him holding a tool bag or box, and when he turned and reached behind him to get another tool, he slipped off the spine, landed on his backside on the wing and broke his coccyx... much to the amusement of the other ground crew. Thank you for sharing this, it warms my heart!

Lol it's not impossible, my dad did several deployments over the course of the war. If you're interested here's a short clip of the "why / who / what" of the war. They were fighting the Russians, Cubans, SWAPO insurgents and a host of other enemies. The airspace fighting over there was intense and the Mirages were the heroes of the day.

Thanks John! 😉 Thank you Paul, really appreciate it! I'm happy with it, but I've seen much better, always learning though! Thanks Deano! That's very interesting! He may have worked closely with or even known my dad then, we're talking about the same war (Border war / Angola war) my wife's dad was in the orchestra... 😂😂 Thank you sir! Yep unfortunately Italeri was the only viable one I could find in 1:32, and I must have spent close to 10 hours just getting the nose cone to remotely match the fuselage, it was probably 2mm too big all round and the shape was way off. I think they rushed this to market too quickly as the stencil detail wasn't even in the instructions and was supplied as a single printed page as an "oops" we forgot this. I also totally bodged the anhedral of the wings, as there was no way to deal with the gaps it would have caused. The molded details are very nice though. Thanks Giannis! Dassault painted the camo in factory according to the SAAF order, but they were repainted numerous times by our crews and the colors changed slightly over the years, (they also painted over a lot of bare metal areas) this scheme is very reminiscent of our African bush landscape and I think it would have worked well.

Hello fellow modellers, this is my rendition of the 2 Squadron Mirage IIICZ my dad worked on (electronics / avionics etc.) in the early 80's in the border war of South Africa. It is also my third model in over 2 decades, and I was originally planning on building it only after I had gotten a fair skill set and some more experience, however I couldn't help myself as I had the model and paints already and just decided to do it now. There isn't a WIP for this one, I simply did not have the time to take pics, and built this in the evenings between work and sleep. The Italeri kit is quite disappointing in fit, and I did a ton of filling / sanding and fettling and it still isn't perfect, but I'm proud of this one and I'm sure my dad would have been too. And that's all that really matters me thinks. The decals were good however the springbok on the castle emblems should be gold metallic and not orange. Which is a shame because some of the other decals included are metallic - so it's not like they couldn't. It's also missing an antenna on the large front landing gear door which the kit did not contain, but overall is a good replica. I did have some slight silvering in places because one of my decalling sessions I had to run to take a delivery and left them in the water too long and something happened to the glue. This was my first time trying to do a camo paint-job and I used the white tac worms technique, which would work really well if I knew what I was doing, but it came out OK and there was really no other way I could think of to get it better. I know now to spray perpendicular to the worms to get a softer and more consistent edge. I mixed the colors myself to get closer to period photos as the instruction colors are a bit off, especially the bottom which was a pale blue to simulate the African sky. The panel lining was done with Mr. Weathering color over a gloss enamel clear coat and came out much better than my previous two builds. The final weathering was done by airbrushing a very thinned mixture of black and german grey, and it is definitely too heavy (these birds were kept very clean by the highly disciplined SAAF ground-crews, of which my dad was one, back then and it would have been a punishable offence to put them away dirty) but it does add some interest and looks more realistic to me. (Let's just say this one JUST got back from a mission 😋) I also got the Eduard PE seat-belt kit (first time using PE - what a learning curve!), and Master pitot for it, as the kit one was horrible. The ladder was included in the kit but the wheel chocks are from my Tomcat kit in the same scale and painted yellow, so not exactly accurate. The base is similar to the Tomcat one, an unused photo frame with a runway painted on the back of the glass, the name is from the decal sheet and the badge was worn on uniform by my dad and was the SAAF emblem from that period. ("Per Aspera Ad Astra" is engraved on it meaning "through hardships, to the stars") Thanks for looking! Critique welcome as always... Happy modelling 😉

Thank you ringo! 😉 Thank you! 😄 Thanks Andy! Number 3 will be up for inspection soon! Look out for the Mirage IIICZ 😁 Thanks Tomcat! Appreciate it! Thank you sir! Yes from far away it looks excellent, it's when you get close you see mistakes, but I'm getting better! 😂 Thank you Mike! Appreciate it sir!

Thank you so much! That really means a lot sir! I will be putting up an RFI of a Mirage IIICZ soon that he used to do electronics and avionics on in the border war. Thanks! Thanks so much! Means a lot coming from an expert on the subject! 😅 Thank you so much! Oh I didn't stop here, you can look at my Phantom build here: and the RFI here: And my Mirage RFI should be up soon. Just need to take some nice pics... Thanks for the kind words, really appreciated!

I have a bit of an upcoming line-up to build before I'll get to a Mig, but I will take your suggestion, thanks! I've seen a few WIPs and RFI's of Eduard kits but sadly have no idea if and where to get them in South Africa. And our postal system is basically non-existent, so shipping will be tricky. 🤦‍♂️

Howsit Colin! Thanks so much sir! 😎 Ja hey I don't know if we have local forums but this one is definitely a tome of knowledge, and I've learned so much! Thanks again Deano! Hopefully I'll be as good as you when I grow up! 😄 Your Mig 21 is stunning!

Thank you so much! 😄 Thank you Russ! 😎 🤣🤣 Thank you arfa! I am getting there one by one, will definitely need a cabinet soon! Thank you! Also thank you for KTM / Husqvarna / fuel-injected electric-start two-stroke dirt-bikes made in Austria! (My other hobby 😋) Thanks Bertie! It's not so much the dirtyness as the fact that I streaked the removal with the lighter fluid, and up close it looks like it was washed with a dirty rag (lines of panel wash embedded in the clear coat) Thanks for the tip, now I just need to figure out what white spirit is called in South Africa... 🤔 - Turpentine? Benzine? Thank you sir! That's an excellent idea on the rescribing, thank you! And yes I'm officially a Tamiya guy now after the F14 - it went together so much better than the Phantom, so definitely their rendition of the Falcon... decals were thick on the Tomcat too though so I agree with AM ones. Thanks! 😁 Thank you so much! 😄