The Heller kit is the old mould that's been around for a while,
a kit that shows its age on its lack of details and raised panel lines. After
giving it some thoughts I decided to use the Heller kit for the Mirage 50EV
conversion and to use the airframe of the High Planes for the Mirage 5V, still
guessing how to correct the nose shape.
For the Mirage 50EV conversion, I
used a Hasegawa Mirage F.1 nose, and added the squarish receivers on the tail,
fin extension, refuelling probe, resin seat (taken from another HP Mirage), and
cannards from plastic sheet. The raised lines were sanded and new ones were
re-described. Of course, having to add a new nose requires some filling and
sanding, but this kit despite of its age, fits well without big problems.
The Mirage 5 nose included on the
HP kit is too long and difficult to fit, so checking the photo references and
scale drawings is a must. As said before, this kit has a lot of plastic excess
and fits very poorly, so a lot of work is needed to put this kit together. One
of the few nice things about this model, is the resin cockpit which includes an
ejection seat, with very nice details. Troubles raise however, when trying to
fit the cockpit tube into the fuselage.
Both models were painted with
Tamiya acrylics, and a mix of "Aztec" Venezuelan generic set and High
Planes kit's decals were used to represent the Mirage 5V just as they entered
service with the Venezuelan Air Force, and the standard scheme that all Mirages
50EVs received after the conversion.
Finally, weathering was applied
with oil paints, and a film of Testors matt cote was airbrushed.
I really enjoyed bringing these
two delta birds together, and I'm looking forward adding some more versions like
the IIIR, 5BA and IIIED to my collection.
Omar
Click on
images below to see larger images
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