AdlA Mirage IIIE in anniversary colors 1/72

[Whirly]

Hello, a late entry here with quite an old kit: I have an Heller Mirage III which I tried to build in a previous GB as a 5BA but was aborted due to horrendous distorsions of the fuselage plastic.

 

 

Now, after several months of treatment, I managed to reduce the issue to a manageable size and started the build a few weeks ago to see how stable would be the plastic ( I got some worrying cracks which I would like to repair BEFORE the painting stage 🙂 ).

 

I also needed some references for the scheme I chose in an equally old Modeldecal sheet, see here my successful search: 

 

So, now I think I'm ready to do some real progress in this build.

 

Thanks for looking!

[Col.]

That's a lovely scheme. Nice choice

[Billos]

23 hours ago, Whirly said:

but was aborted due to horrendous distorsions of the fuselage plastic.

@Whirly Yes mine had exactly the same distortion. I thought it was just mine, but clearly there's some systematic issue. The nose/fuselage distortion is actually quite easy to fix. The other thing I found in mine was that the wings were very distorted from level. That took quite a bit of work to sort. see my build. (Fab Mirage III)

         

Edited November 21, 2024 by Billos
link fixed

[Whirly]

On 11/21/2024 at 6:32 PM, Billos said:

@Whirly Yes mine had exactly the same distortion. I thought it was just mine, but clearly there's some systematic issue. The nose/fuselage distortion is actually quite easy to fix. The other thing I found in mine was that the wings were very distorted from level. That took quite a bit of work to sort. see my build. (Fab Mirage III)

         

 

@Billos I saw your experience with the Heller kit is quite similar, though in my case the wings were quite right, while fuselage had a bad hump which throwed out of alignment the fin too:

 

 

 

I fixed more or less these defects with careful application of brute force and a bit of hot air, obtaining a *nearly* stright fuselage.

 

 

The underside remained quite problematic and you can see white stress marks under the right intake

 

 

To prevent catastrofic failures I made a generous application of plastic reinforcements and super glue under the fuselage spine, first opening an 'inspection panel' 😄

 

 

 

 

This seemed the most stressed area, though a nasty crack developed in the right wing root

 

 

This was remedied with plastic cement and now the fault seems inactive.

The final step was restoring the wheelwell ceiling I previously destroyed, this was an easy task with thin plasticard.

 

 

Now I really hope no more cracks will appear: seems the plastic is not only deformed but also very brittle, maybe it took some strong heat in storage since it is a second hand kit and I don't know its previous history.

 

Thanks for looking!

[TEMPESTMK5]

Good afternoon Whirly

 You have done a great job trying to correct all the deformed parts of this Kit .👍..I can tell that  if I had been in your place this kit would have ended up in the trash ...

Best of luck for the rest of your build ...

Best regards 

Patrice 

[Col.]

Well done getting the deformed parts back into Mirage-shape. That's impressive work and perseverance.