Mirage III-O, RV Aircraft 1/72

[Peter Lloyd]

Hello Britmodellers. My first GB attempt in some time after a fail-to-finish in last year's Lancaster GB.  I aspire to finish a couple of models for this one courtesy of a significant cut to my work hours.

 

My first will be this little (I hope) beauty:

 

 

Typical Czech stuff in a strong box.

 

 

Well-drawn instructions and six lovely schemes.

 

 

Hard to know which way to go, but my father was an air traffic controller at Williamtown and Richmond in the 60s and early 70s so probably one of these options.

 

 

RV Aircraft have 'rivet' detail, which I'm not a fan of, but I hope it wont be too obtrusive.

 

 

 

 

Resin seat, decent canopy, and good-looking, crisply printed decals.

 

Although my father left the RAAF when I was very young, but I grew up loving aeroplanes and the only fast military jets I might ever get to see as a young'un were the RAAF's Mirages flying over the house in Sydney (do military jets ever do that any more?).  To me the Mirage still epitomises what a jet fighter should look like... the F/A-18 is a delivery van next to the svelte French masterpiece.  Mirages and F-111s... if an air force could be judged on aesthetics, we had a good one.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

Welcome aboard Peter... I had tried to get a Mirage for this but just couldn't swing it with my Budget. So I will follow this and enjoy it.

[JOCKNEY]

Great stuff Peter, nice to have all those options to build.

 

Best of luck

 

Cheers Pat

[bianfuxia]

Where did you get that kit from? I was/am keen to get a Mirage but all I could find was the really old Revell or Heller ones or some exy resin one.

 

Great range of options to choose from there too!

[Peter Lloyd]

On 1/20/2021 at 9:02 PM, bianfuxia said:

Where did you get that kit from? I was/am keen to get a Mirage but all I could find was the really old Revell or Heller ones or some exy resin one.

 

Great range of options to choose from there too!

 I had it on backorder at the Big H for a long time, it turned up a few months ago but appeared to be instantly sold out.

 

Special Hobby have a Mirage III due for release soon, that will be the one to wait for and we can count on SH to do an option for the 'Oz'.

 

Edited February 9, 2021 by Peter Lloyd

[Peter Lloyd]

Okay, off we go.

 

 

The instrument panel as supplied: not too bad in comparison to shots I've seen and seemingly more accurate than most aftermarket. The radar scope (lower-centre) is indistinct and I made a simple modification to make it more prominent.

 

 

Apologies for the bad photo. The seat is the only resin (Pavla perhaps) part, and there is thankfully no PE.  Side consoles disappointingly bare, but the basis is there if you want to add more.

 

 

The motor. The instructions are pretty vague on what goes where, there are two discs and I think the one with the 'nose' points forward.  The RAAF specified the Rolls Royce Avon the F86 Sabre and then spent years on the engineering.  One suspects that although an Avon Mirage was contemplated and would have been excellent, the Australian Government learnt its lesson.  At the time these were purchased, there would have been considerable pressure to avoid Australia's air defences becoming obsolete before the arrival of the new French jets.

 

 

The instructions are pretty poor.  Note how the first cockpit illustration contradicts the 'assembled' image.  The pictures dont look a lot like the parts (the big 'box' in front of the stick isn't there).  Real short-run kit stuff, lots and lots of fettling and testing. Not a big deal but there you have it.

 

 

Initial fit of cockpit and fuselage sides.

 

 

Grinding with the Dremel and small cuts to accommodate the instrument panel etc.

 

 

[Peter Lloyd]

 

This photo shows the general molding quality. The rivets (spot welds?) are not to my taste but are about as well done as you could hope. Soft plastic, some flash, big gates.  The parts are thick and as on most short-run kits you have to do a lot of thinning the back of parts.  This is to accommodate the upper wing and allow it to close up with the lower.

 

It is remarkable that there are not many parts to this kit.

 

 

I have opted to join the wings, and then drop the fuselage onto the assembly. This is so I could concentrate on the join illustrated. The other option would be to focus on the upper wing-fuselage joint. The engineering of the kit seems to be quite good, once you remove the plastic that should not be there.

 

This join is tricky. The lower wing needs different amounts of pressure at different points to get the best seam with no steps. This is due to the curvature of the leading edges rather than any offending plastic behind. The upper wing needs some pressure to close up the angle (under the orange peg).  Its one of those situations where you can hold it in your hands and get it right, but to replicate the right situation with clamps is complicated. I might have been better off using the first approach and super glue.  If you just throw a heap of clamps on it, it won't be bad at all, just not so perfect.

[JOCKNEY]

Hi Peter

Have you had a chance to make any more progress on your Mirage ?

Cheers Pat 

[Peter Lloyd]

On 3/22/2021 at 5:29 AM, JOCKNEY said:

Hi Peter

Have you had a chance to make any more progress on your Mirage ?

Cheers Pat 

 Yes mate, thank you. Progress has been slow but steady.

 

 

A bit of fettling is needed here, note the slots carved out for the instrument panel to fit into. The seat needs careful height adjustment to ensure the canopy will fit.

 

 

Cockpit starb'd side.  Mirages have to be accurate in this presentation to look right. . .

 

 

. . . but as you can see I couldn't quite get mine symmetrical.  This is after quite a lot of pushing and pulling, whereby improving one dimension upset another.  Sticking the cockpit halves to the fuselage halves first is probably a better way to go.  I feel like I have said that about other models, perhaps I should learn?

 

 

By considering mostly the two side-on angles seen above, I ended up with this.  Not much to be done about it, and it's actually not noticeable from most angles depsite looking pretty dramatic here.

 

 

Fit is 'short run', but not bad.

 

 

The wheel well needed heavy modification and the instructions were very vague about it.  In fact, the instructions are not good.  Parts are numbered in the assembly diagrams, but not on the sprues (of course) nor is there a sprue map in the instructions.  With vague drawings in certain respects, it can be hard to tell which, for example, belly fairing to use.  Reference photos are a must.

[Peter Lloyd]

 

And we arrive here.  The nose does indeed lack the 'double ramp' effect of the Mirage, once you know it's a bit annoying.  The nose should not have 'rivets' either, so if I did this again I'd perhaps build up the rear half with liquid plastic, mount it in the Dremel, and try to turn it into a better shape. Mr Surfacer has been used to fill recesses, the soft, short-run molding is good enough that there are few gaps, but the soft edges mean filling is needed. The fuselage spine RV use works well.

 

 

There is no sign of the terrain following radar, so I added some thin sheet plastic. I considered opening some of the air outlets but decided not to. RV gives separate pieces for some of them.  It is really hard to tell which elevon actuator goes where.  Another issue here is if you cement the elevons onto the wing first, as I did, the actuators will not attach flush to them.  If one were to attach the actuators to the elevons first, then fix that to the wing, the elevons would not fit correctly along the hinge line. The exhaust fairing goes on very well.

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

You're making good progress and with some nice detail work. They're not known as limited run for nothing. 

[Andwil]

You are doing a terrific job of bashing some ugly looking mouldings into a Mirage.

 

AW

[Peter Lloyd]

My model got a coat of Mr Surfacer 1000, and some sanding around the joint between the cockpit/fuselage front, and the wing/fuselage assembly.  It all fits pretty well, considering, and not much detail was lost.  Having a separate part for the fuselage spine means almost all the seams could be filled with Mr Surfacer and lightly sanded.

 

I used Gunze Aqueous Extra Dark Sea Grey for the first coat:

 

 

Something I have noticed looking at photos of Mirages is the 'two step' nose cone I mentioned earlier is not always obvious.  I wonder if some, especially later aircraft received a new cone with a slightly different contour?

[wayne 0]

Great to see you pressing on with this one Peter.

Such a pretty aircraft.

 

The state of your work bench makes me think I'm either tidy, or nowhere near busy enough.

[Peter Lloyd]

My workbench is an utter abomination, defying all efforts at imposing order.  Being in the middle of about a dozen builds, I can't move anything for fear it will be lost forever.  But why there is a bomb from a Blenheim I finished a year ago, and wheels from a P-47 that went to the cabinet in October... um, well... it's either some sore of personality disorder, or my limited modelmaking time can't be wasted on tidying.

[Romeo Alpha Yankee]

Nice work Peter, just caught up on your build.

 

Not sure what you mean by a two step nose cone, RAAF Mirage's used 3 types of noses, the radar nose you have used, a dummy nose which was used when an aircraft went off for Deeper Level Maintenance (you can see it on ARDU's A3-2, it is a dummy nose modified to carry a camera) and the photo recon nose which is much long to take a KA-56 camera.

 

Also Mirages did not have TFR, the bulge you removed/did not fit was for the Doppler Radar antenna, ours did have the Doppler but the antenna was flush with the fuselage, there is a black dielectric panel noticeable on all singe seaters as can be seen on this 77SQN jet.

 

 

[JOCKNEY]

Hi Peter

Great to see this one progressing  

Cheers Pat 

[Peter Lloyd]

 

I used Gunze Aqueous paints as usual, Extra Dark Sea Grey and Olive Drab with a little extra 'green' added.  The decals are easy to use, strong and thin, they move quickly off the backing paper in warm water. The demarkation of the white was very slightly off, you can see this on the roundels.  It is however opaque. The colours are not really quite right and look 'inky'. I used Micro Set on application, followed by Mirco Sol, which the decals ignored.

 

 

Ray's photo above makes it abundantly clear that I chose the wrong underside fairing.  I choose to believe that I now have a spare that I can use in the future on a better build of the flying wedge.  I will tone down the underside weathering as well.  It's getting close now.

 

 

 

 

I have no idea why the canopy fogged as you see.  These images should show the good and the bad fairly well. Still a few bits to add and some painting. 

 

This is the most modern aircraft in my collection: until a few years ago I didn't even have anything with swept wings, my original self-imposed theme was 'up to 1945', and I stuck to that for about 60 models.  In the last few years I did several straight wing jets, then a MiG-15 and Yak-25 snuck in, now all my principles are gone.  Still, the Mirage is a truly beautiful plane and I well remember them streaking over Sydney in my childhood, at which time my father was an air traffic controller at Richmond and Williamtown.

 

I'll take some good photos and add them to the gallery.  A very big thanks to anyone who looks in and those who organised and helped make this group build another success.  It really helps me stay focussed and get the model to completion.

[exdraken]

Looks rather fantastic!

 

Great work!!

[helios16v]

Nice Mirage Peter. 

 

I think I built this same airframe (A3-78) in 48th from a Kinetic kit (modified a South American variant), and the roos got me too.  Something to watch for on future RAAF builds, the roos always run forward.  I did the same thing, fortunately like yours it's on the bottom so no one is the wiser.  I hadn't even realized it until someone brought it up.  

[Peter Lloyd]

Gallery locked up, so final pics:

 

 

[bissyboat]

Cracking model of the Mirage. It´s a stunner! ⚓🙌