1/72 Heller & Hasegawa Mirage F1C/CR

Gallery Article by Jean-Paul Wrona on July 14 2010

France National Day 2010

 

Here are two Mirage F1 : a Mirage F1C from Hasegawa and a Mirage F1CR from Heller.  They were done from the end of 2008 (start of the C) to the beginning of 2010 (end of the CR).

Unfortunately, due to computer problems, most the building steps pictures of the F1C are lost.

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The Hasegawa Mirage F1C :
It's an old kit which appeared more than 25 years ago. With raised panel lines and accurate shape. I wanted to do a nice representation of this Mirage with some improvements : I rescribed the panel lines, detailed the cockpit (PE mirrors, Pavla resin seat, scratchbuilding for the instruments panel cap, transparent little plastic square for the HUD), and some wire for the undercarriage legs.
For the markings, I chose the Mirage F1C n°46, coded 12-YE and belonging to the EC 1/12 "Cambraisis". The aircraft wears an Air Defense Blue camouflage (Humbrol 157 by brush) with great size squadron insignias. The lower surfaces are bare-metal (Tamiya TS-17). As you can see, the tail is partially painted in yellow and black for the 1979 Nato Tiger Meet. Most of the decals are from the kit. The roundels came from a Carpena decal sheet. Some little insignias painted on the aircraft by French, English and German crews were done with a very fine brush.
The few pictures I saw of this aircraft show her without external load. So, the belly tank, the Magic and the Matra 530 missiles were send to the spare box.

The Heller Mirage F1CR :
Initially, Heller committed a Mirage F1B/C kit, released before the Hasegawa kit. As it name indicates, there were options for a single seat and a twin seater aircrafts (and also different fins). That's why when the mold was modified for to do a F1CR recon version, the kit conserved this difficult cut.
Contrary to the Hasegawa kit, I decided to do a out of the box building. The reason was that I wanted to see the result without a rescribing operation (rescribing takes time) and a closed canopy.

I add metal foil for the seat belts and a little plastic square for the HUD. I couldn't resist, finally, to the temptation of adding walls in the forward landing gear bay and to improve the SLAR recce pod.
For the colors, I used Gunze acrylic paints applied with an airbrush for the upper surfaces, and the Heller's recommended mix of grey and silver (Humbrol 56 + 64) applied with a brush for the lower surfaces.

Decals are from the kit. But some of them are badly printed. They depict an aircraft belonging to the ER 2/33 "Savoie" in 1984.

 For the external loads : the SLAR recce pod, underwing tanks, Phimat pods and Matra Magic missiles (with modified fins).

I hope you like them.

Jean-Paul Wrona

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Photos and text © by Jean-Paul Wrona