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Late again!

it's about time I started this. No box top picture I'm afraid because I discarded the flimsy box when I left the UK

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The Italeri is a re-boxing of the old Esci kit which represented the prototype so whilst accurate in shape will need some alterations to represent a production aircraft. I am also going to use the Eduard resin jet pipe, designed for the Heller kit but still should fit well, and the excellent R-flight resin and etched cockpit set. Also from Rennaisance will be the elevon set which includes the Spirale chaff/flare dispensers and other small details.

The eagle eyed amongst you will have probably noticed that I have already attached the splitter plate and shock cone to the starboard fuselage, I have done this with all my Mirage kits as I find that you can adjust the outer part of the intake to give a better fit rather than fitting the whole intake to the fuselage.

More to come soon, I hope.

Cheers

John

Edited by Biggles87
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Heyyy, good choice! I did consider doing the Eduard D/N version for the FF gig; the R-Flight resin and p/e is excellent and fits well by all accounts (very chemical-smelly though, for some reason!). Unfortunately, the R-Flight afterburner looks anything but accurate -but your Aires one should be spot-on. :thumbsup:

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Bonjour et bienvenue Biggles!

Glad to have you on board - good to see a Mirage 2000C, have you given any thought as to which markings you'll give it?

Wez

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  • 2 weeks later...

UPDATE 19/04

This is the sum total of my progress so far, not very much!

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I have cemented the outer parts of the air intakes to the fuselage and am pleased with the results

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I have also filled some of the panels on the nose which applied to the prototype only, here is a before (sanding) and after comparison shot, unfortunately I used Tamiya putty which is very close to the colour of the plastic so the filled in panel lines do not show up too much. There are more unwanted panel lines on the top of the nose but theses will be dealt with when the fuselage halves are joined.

I have given the major components of the Renaissance cockpit set a coating of the ever popular (with me anyway) Halfords grey plastic primer. You can see that the detail on the rear cockpit wall is pretty impressive and there are still some etched parts to add to it. The Renaissance resin is quite brittle so has to be handled carefully, and there are pinholes to be dealt with, one of which is right at the top of the port canopy breaker on the ejection seat, so I will attempt to add a blob of CA and sand it to shape. There is also an impressive etched fret, which I have forgotten to photograph (next time) which includes the grills which will cover the exposed wiring/cables in the recesses in the cockpit coaming.

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Well, that's about it for now.

Thanks for looking in

John :pilot:

Edited by Biggles87
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Thanks for that both, I forgot to mention that my main references for this build will be the magazine shown above which is a Wing Masterd hors series which has a build of a Mirage 2000 and some good photos, and another French magazine entitled "Raids".

More soon, I hope

John

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It does look promising. The details to paint look very minute. Have fun and lay off the coffee!

JR

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  • 4 weeks later...

UPDATE 17/05 and about time too you might say!

This is the sum tool of my efforts since last time.

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You can see that I have joined the wings and removed the elevons while waiting for a set from Renaissance Flight. I had originally planned to cement the top wings to the fuselage then join the bottom one, but after taping everything together the fit was so good that I decided to go the conventional route, let's hope I was right.

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The cockpit tub was painted Dark Compass Grey and the boxes on the rear face Metalcote Gunmetal with wiring in Tamiya Metallic Grey. there are several tiny etched pieces which fit onto the rear face but most of them will disappear when the seat is added so I have decided to add only the two mesh screens which fit over the the holes on either side of the topmost part.

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The seat painting gave me a real problem. The basic colour is Dark Sea Grey, with pale green back and seat packs. the problem came when painting the harness, the casting is fairly soft and I found it difficult to delineate everything clearly and so had to keep going over places where I had made mistakes which was very time consuming. I still have to paint the buckles and tidy up in a couple of places, but I'm not going to spend much more time on it.

The instrument panel consists of two pieces of film covered by two etched pieces and again there is a little tidying up to do but I'm nearly there. The side consoles are two etched pieces with tiny holes in them so I painted the resin underneath white with a few dabs of other colours in the hope that they would show through when the etch was fitted, not entirely successful but enough to convey the appearance of switches etc.

Oops, just noticed I have posted the same picture twice and Photobucket is now refusing to let me download, so I will complete this update tomorrow.

Cheers for now

John

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Update 17/05 Part 2

Firstly here is the missing picture of the seat, from the last post I have not yet attempted to repair the canopy breaker, I will leave that till I am ready to fit the canopy.

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As you can see I still have to add the stick, throttle and rudder pedals to the cockpit tub and then, after some tidying up all round I will call that finished.

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I have also started work on the Aires exhaust, I initially painted all the pieces gun metal and randomly streaked the jet pipe with Aclad pale burnt metal and jet exhaust. I have placed the actual outer petals backwards on the jet pipe because this piece is very thin and easily 'crinkled', ask me how I know! There are some etched pieces to go on the "fan " end of the jet pipe but I doubt that much of it will be seen when the whole thing is in pace. After painting the outer exhaust petals with Citadel gun bolt silver I applied washes of tin bits and armour wash and will continue to dry brush various metallic shades onto it until I think it looks OK. the black hole in the background, by the way, is the entrance to my 'man cave'.

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Once I have the cockpit and coaming/instrument panel in place I can close up the fuselage and everything else should go together very quickly (yeah right as SWMBO often says!)

Finally here is a picture of my senior helper, her name is Flossie, she is 11 years old and still likes the occasional bit of gardening hence the plastic flowerpot! she's a good girl she just carries them around whereas the other two destroy them.

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That's it for now, so thanks for watching (if you have been), as usual any comments/criticism are welcome

cheers

John

Line abreast Go :pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot::pilot:

Edited by Biggles87
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