1/72 Tamiya Rafale C

Gallery Article by Deun Yu on Sept 18 2003

 

I built this Rafale C in the of summer 2001. The plastic parts for this Tamiya kit (from 1994) are originally from Italy and have raised panel lines. The fit in general is okay, some parts are rather good, some are very bad. So are the upper and the lower fuselage halves - they didn't go together at all because the lower one was completely deformed. I corrected it carefully over the flame of a candle as far as I could - doesn't look perfect, but its okay.

I added some details to the cockpit: 3 mirrors for the canopy and a new HUD (the original one was normal, non-transparent black plastic!). There were also some antennas near the radome that had to be added to get the Rafale looking right.

The intakes were quite a problem. Each intake consists of 2 parts, their fit to the fuselage is bad! Sanding the joint between these parts and the upper fuselage was difficult, not just because of the shape of the surface but also because of the canards which already had to be mounted by that stage of construction. An overall black paint for the Rafale C can hide the one or the other mistake...

 

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But there's a thing to say about the decals - they're surprisingly good, better than the rest of the kit. The accurately printed decals depict the C 01.

The kit does include weapons, I just didn't build them. There are 2 external tanks, 2 Magic and 4 Mica.  

Because of the low quality of this kit it is certainly not a typical Tamiya kit. I was kind of disappointed, but still I wanted it built. And it does look nice after all, doesn’t it?

Deun Yu

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Photos and text © by Deun Yu