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Mirage F1EE 1/48 - Italeri (Esci)


pigsty

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Here’s the old Esci Mirage F1, built from the Italeri CR/CT boxing but finished as a Mirage F1EE of the Ejercito del Aire.

 

Mirage F1EE 2

 

Mirage F1EE 1

 

Mirage F1EE 3

 

It’s a decent kit, all-engraved and well shaped, though poorly detailed in the undercarriage bays and the cockpit.  It mostly goes together nicely.  The wings sit at the right angle with very little work, the intake centrebodies are very sharp, and the radome fits well.  The undercarriage is a fairly good representation of the complex real thing, and it’s refreshingly easy to get all six wheels to touch the deck.  On the other hand: the tailplanes are hard to locate properly and fit snugly at the same time; the intake mouths are a little slimmer than the ducts behind them; the panel lines are quite shallow where the fuselage halves join; and I’m not sure the ventral fins lean far enough apart.  The cockpit glazing isn’t great either.  The parts are nice and clear, but the canopy is slightly too tall and narrow, and the windscreen is too short in length (but OK in height).  Finally, and this is a quibble, the insert for the underside of each wing is a little shallow and would benefit from a small shim.

 

Mirage F1EE 5

 

Mirage F1EE 6

 

As well as the kit plastic we have:

  • NeOmega cockpit - a must, and as always, very nice.  Except that you have to make your own firing handles for the seat.  The underside of the cockpit includes the nosegear bay, which allows you to build it with the rearmost door open - not common, but possible.  The set also includes that door, which they call a “left sidewall”, though it opens to the right.  Finally, there’s a replacement for the top of the nosegear leg.  I’m not sure why, and it does nothing to help with the fit of the nosegear into what is a very different bay.  Mine is slightly nose-high because of this.
  • Master pitots.  That’s the nose probe and one of the four sensors around the forward fuselage.  If Master could apply their skills to the other type of pitot probe, that would be a real bonus.
  • AML exhaust.  This gives so much detail that some of it is buried behind the flameholder.  Unfortunately you'll have to take my word for it, as I can't get a decent shot inside the jetpipe.  The moulding is a bit skew-whiff and you have to be careful trimming it to fit together and to fit the kit parts.  AML supply a frame that sits between the tailplanes to hold the inner end of the exhaust.  It’s tricky to fit, and I don’t think you need it - the kit parts hold the nozzle so firmly that it won’t fall in or droop.
  • Eagle Strike decals - these cover country-specific markings, leaving the more generic stuff to your kit.  As Spain translated sauvetage to salvamento I reckoned I couldn’t leave ne pas marcher for the flaps, so there are probably gaps in coverage.  This may be more of a problem with some of the other markings in the set.

 

Mirage F1EE cockpit

 

Mirage F1EE nosegear

 

The upper colour is Xtracolor Mirage F1 blue, which has changed colour at least twice with various varnishes.  For the underside I havered a bit over whether it should be metallic, and concluded that most are actually plain grey.  I chose Humbrol 127 Ghost Gray.

Other small building points:

  • using the resin exhaust makes nose weight even more important than with the kit parts.  I filled the radome with fine lead shot.
  • the refuelling probe is a poor fit, especially with the windscreen moved to where it should be, and it’s over-sized.  I left it off.  As this aircraft flew with Ala 462 on the Canary Islands, this could be a spot of bother.

I also left off the guns, as they’re odd little half-round things, and I’m not sure how visible they are on the real thing.  The kit’s missiles are poor, especially the R.550s, so I used Hasegawa AIM-9Js instead.

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