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Hi all, I always liked the graceful lines of this jet. I grew up in Italy and in those years this aeroplane was a rather common view in the skies over there and it was also seen in occasions of visiting airbases and airshows. Its story is quite known and I am not trying to repeat it here. It just suffices saying that it was developed in years '50 by Fiat Aeronautica as a subsonic tactical jet under the lead of G. Gabrielli, who also signed earlier Italian designs like the G. 50 and G. 55. The Italeri kit is the only game in town in 1/48 scale and is a re-boxing of the old ESCI kit. I bought the box shown below more than ten years ago and it waited since for its turn to be built. The kit was nice for its time, but today it somehow falls short of expectations. Its surface is detailed with fine positive lines that only approximately reproduce the actual paneling arrangement. The interior too leaves much to be desired being basic and fictional. With the intention of building a decent 'Gina', I started with sanding and rescribing the entire surface. This is the first time I rescribe a model to such an extent and, as expected, it took long time with many corrections and reworks. This is an image during the process. Once liberated from the positive details and from the sink marks scattered over its surface, the graceful lines of the airframe can be better appreciated. The model reproduces the original shape reasonably well, the only exception being the underside area, below the jet pipe where the contour slopes up too steeply towards the jet exhaust. Such a shape is a feature that can be observed in the G.91 T. It appears that at Italeri they mixed up the two types. Also the pattern of the vortex vanes on the tail cone is incorrect for an 'R' type and again it belongs to a 'T' type. At any rate, being the vanes necessarily molded too thickly, I chose to remove them completely. At the same time, I also removed the rudder part from the vertical surface for better detailing. I tried to make them new out of a thin aluminium foil of a disposable food tray. I made them with an 'L' shape, like the real things, and then glued them with CA. I tried to make them of the smallest dimensions that I could, however, a certain size is necessary for handling and for providing a secure glue bonding. Perhaps till a tad out of scale, but better than the originals, in my view, and with the correct pattern. Once the dark colors of the camouflage will tone them down they will be acceptable, I hope. Now that the most tedious part is over, I will tackle the cockpit. For this, when I bought the kit, I also outsourced the very nice cockpit set of Neomega that seems to fit pretty well the available volume. That's all for now, any comment or critique are welcome. Best regards, Daniele

Multiple builds seem to be fashionable at the moment, and having recently finished a couple of builds I started in the UK 15 + years ago, I decided to look for similar projects and found, amongst others these two Mirages, both from Italeri. The Mirage F1 was started for the last French Fancy STGB and I didn’t get around to finishing it in time which is often the case. As you can see the airframe is almost complete, with just a few ancillaries and stores to add. The cockpit is from the excellent Neomega set, which is really good value as it provides two different seats and two different radar screens, one with and one without a hood, from which I chose the latter; Strangely the Mk10 seat is too wide for the tub but fortunately I have another which does fit.The jet pipe came mostly out of the spares box ( the kit item is too shallow ) as did the second fuel tank, only one being supplied in the kit. The Presto reconnaissance pod comes from the french company Renaissance who produce some very nice resin accessories for mostly french aircraft, naturally. I started the Mirage 2000 about five years ago and stopped not very far into the build, I can’t remember why, but possibly to start on another GB which I probably didn’t finish anyway. The old Italeri kit, which itself was probably a re-boxing of another make, probably represents an early model although it says Mirage 2000C on the instructions, the box has long gone. I am not intending to make any major structural changes in the name of accuracy, I don’t have enough Mirage 2000 references for that, but will attempt to enhance what I’ve got with the aid of some aftermarket bits and pieces. The cockpit and control surfaces are Renaissance products and I have a jet pipe from Aires to replace the kit parts. You can see that I had already joined the wings and fitted the air intakes and used a .45 spent round for the nose weight fixed in place with some Bluetack and bits of sprue, and I have adapted the nose wheel well roof, which was part of the kit cockpit, to act as a support for the resin cockpit. If I’d planned it properly I would have left the rear bulkhead in place as the resin cockpit tub needs to sit forward of the fuselage spine rather than under it, so I had to make another rear bulkhead from Plasticard. Duh! The centreline fuel tank supplied in the kit had fins and end-plates, which I haven’t seen any evidence of in recent photos so the slots for these have been filled in with Plasticard and sanded So having stalled on my current build ( a Hunter ) I now have three ongoing builds and updates could be even more sporadic than usual from me but I hope you’ll stick with me. Stay safe everyone. John.