Mirage F1C......

Hi Guys,

 

I know for sure that Tim was muttering about the lack of aircraft blogs from my side recently, in fact it has been all too quiet as some of you will have realised. This has been caused variously by long hours at work, a serious bout of bronchitis, sinusitis and associated collapse at work, followed most recently by laser surgery on both eyes to seal leaking veins caused by my diabetic condition. Ok ,never mind we seem to be fighting again.

 

Now I started building this one sometime ago in fact during last December during the time when I was cameraless - awaiting the arrival of my Nikon D3000, so as a result there is no record of the actual build itself, only what will prove to be the latter painting and weathering stages.

 

I do hope that you will join me for this stage anyway.

 

The Mirage F1 is in my opinion one of the prettiest of the modern jet fighters with its elegant graceful lines yet a deadly Mig Killer in the hands of at least the SAAF in the skies over Angola during the border war.

 

For anyone wanting to read more about the history of this fascinating aircraft please go to Mirage F1

 

and

 

 

and

 

 

Finally...

 

 

I hope that you can cleen something interesting from all of the above and understand my love for this aircraft. My only regret is that this is a very old moulding, in fact the ancient ESCI one and really does the aircraft no justice at all. I built her strictly out of the box and decided to live with all the shortcomings as imo their are far too many cprrections to be made.

 

Let us hope that someone somewhere come out with a decent F1 kit soon. PLEASE!

 

I will be finishing as a French Air Force F1, as my previous 2 builds were respectively Spanish AF and South African AF.

 

 

Tamiya Primer on.....

 

Tamiya Gloss aluminium on the undersurfaces.....

 

Lots of Tamiya masking tape going on to mask off the hard edges separation lines

 

 

Upper surfaces airbrushed with Vallejo Mirage Blue Grey whicch is actually bluer to the naked eye that appears in these early shots....

 

and from above....

 

Thanks for watching this lads and as usual all comments, quips and whatever(within reason) welcomed.

 

Cheers

Tony

Tony

 

Will follow along and get some pointers on weathering Aircraft mate.

 

cheers

 

Rossco

 

Hi Tony, worth getting just for that Decal sheet, right up Tims street i think, keep well sir.

 

Kind Regards.

 

 

Nige.

Hi Ross,

 

So very good to have you along here, Mmm Oz has had a history of Mirage operations too, although it was the Mirage IIIO and now you guys have the stunner SuperBug aka Super Hornet. Yes, be still my beating heart.....

 

Cheers

Tony

Hi Tony

A very sleek looking craft indeed. I may never build a wingy thing but I'm interested to see how the weathering is done.

Jim

Hi Nige,

 

So right my friend the decal sheet is awesome and is by Cartograf, well worth it alone. This is the good thing about the newer Italeri re-releases and releases for that matter, they are including decal sheets that up there with the best in the world both in quality and variety of subject matter. Almost make the aftermarket stuff seem redundant.

 

Cheers

Tony

Hi Jimbo

 

 

Welcome for the ride. This one be interesting as I will have to restrain my self some what

as i don't want to turn it into a panzer on the Ost . See Cambresis and its the one on the boxart too

 

Tony

Hi Tony

 

Yeah there's a couple of kits out celebrating 30 years of the Mirage in Australian service, with special decals, been meaning to get one.

 

Always liked them since one scared the living daylights out of me one day on the tractor. He was low and going flat out and kinda sneaked up on me , must of been an exercise cause we had a couple of days of them, all low and fast.

 

cheers

 

Rossco

 

Tony, no doubt about it many of the lower to middle names have upped their game as regards decals, going with the Cartograf option, and as you say catching up with the aftermaket boys.

 

Nige.

Looking forward to seeing this progress Tony.

 

Its quite nice to blog at the start of painting,then its just about bringing the model to life.

 

neil.