Special Hobby Mirage III and F.1 in 1/72

[Thadeus]

Hi, I'm Thaddeus and I'm a serial kit starter.

 

I don't know about You, but I seem to have a favourite kit. And to my surprise it's not an F/A-18 kit.

The Special Hobby Mirage F.1 kit I seem to have to have in an in-progress stage. Not too long ago I built my second kit, and I imidietly had to start a third one. The aircraft itself isn't particulary appealing to me visiually. Not more than, say, F-16 or a MiG-21. The kit however is extremely nice. Some thick panel lines, yes, a little bit of filler needed - indeed. But overall, I really like this kit.

I seem to have an urge to keep building one. Last one took more than a year to finish, and I managed to complete several kits in the meantime. First one probably took as much time, if not more. But I kept coming back to them every now and then.

 

The Mirage III is something that popped in my head once I built my MiG-29 in Polish air force markings.

 

Both kits will be built as per boxart.

 

 

I mean, just look at it. It's such a nice kit.

 

 

So many options. Almost full weapons load, several options in plastic, sometimes a few more in resin. Nice clear parts. Be carefull though. Some boxings have short shot parts. My F.1b had defects in main undercarriage that I only spotted once I was building it (actually, long after I glued it. Something wasn't right with the stance of the jet).

 

 

Special Hobby kit is also very nice. Panel lines are extremely thin though, I hope they will take the wash well.

 

 

Again, a few nice options. Different fuel tanks, some bombs, some missiles. There are even two types of fuel tanks with integral unguided missile launchers. No launcher cones though. Weird. I have two boxings, from two retailers, bought at two different times, and they both don't have that.

 

 

I'm actually a little bit into the builds, so I might do a second update in a day or two. Lovelly kits they are both!

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[GeneK]

17 hours ago, Thadeus said:

 ... I'm a serial kit starter ... I don't know about You, but I seem to have a favourite kit.

 Ha ha! I resemble that ... with Phantoms.

 

I'm looking forward to seeing how you progress. Appreciate the fine pics as well as the

commentary. 

 

Gene K

[Thadeus]

Well, It would be much less weird had it been an F/A-18 kit.

Funny thing is I have three larger projects ongoing, and two additional projects in progress. Plus, I've already a plan for another project. I must resist.

 

So, let's check some progress...

One thing nice about the SH F.1 is I can put it together in a couple of hours. There are however a few places I seem to struggle every time.

 

First one is the intake/speedbrake assembly. The parts itself are very nicelly moulded. However the entire assembly feels like it's tiny bit off. I usually end up with a minimal gap on the mating surfaces. This time I tried to make it a little more precise by sanding the existing peg. Just a swipe with a sanding stick will suffice. It's quite easy to just add some filler though, which is what I eventually ended up doing despite my efforts.

Please, don't use my method of removing ejector pins from parts. They are quite thick and would be better cut off. Mr Lazy here didn't bother and just snapped them off.

 

 

Honestly though, once glued I just needed a bit of fille to get everything smoothed out. I find scribing any panel lines on the untakes is best done when they are not attached.

 

Another part that is a little troublesome are the wings. The underside insert is a little bit too thick. I was told the entire wing piece is too thick as well, but I'm not going to verify that, much less attempt to thin it down. The insert usually requires a bit of sanding work and then clamping.

 

The cockpit however is not troublesome at all. On the first one I painted it entirelly. But since then I found out that kit decals fit the IP piece pretty good. I just paint the whole thing with some black paint (this time Vallejo air Nato Black) with a drop of white or two. You can see the contrast with the black on the decal.

 

 

One thing that I never tried on this kit is to try and close the landing gear doors. From the pictures I've seen it would seem like they are usually closed shut. I did this with no support from the inside which generally isn't the best idea. But it works. Just fit the small upper door first and all should be well. All the filler here is just temporary. I tend to add way more than I need. Humbrol putty sands easilly too. So having a little more is generally better. I didn't to a good job on the left wing insert, and had to add a little more filler to the top joint (the one pointing to the wing tip).

 

One thing I never did as well is to add the nosecone to the assembled fuselage. The joint is never a particularly good one, but I feel it is better to assemble two fuselage halves with nosecone halves attached.

The entire assembly is a bit troublesome for me, as I don't have a good way of ensuring proper angle on the wings.

 

 

Basicly, all I need is to sand the rest of the putty, check the seams, mask the canopy and then I'm ready to paint.

 

Thanks for stopping by.

[Thadeus]

It seems I'm a slow updater.

 

The Mirage III is a very nice, probably a little overcomplicated kit. It does offer a lot of options, which seems to be the Special Hobby

The fit is generally pretty good. You have a main fuselage split in two halves with separate exhaust shroud. Pretty neat, as there are differences between Mirage III variants here.

 

 

I love the cockpits on these little Mirages. Both F.1 and III have similar, and very nice cockpits.

 

 

 

Wings have moulded trailing edge flaps. They can however be easilly assembled in a down position.

 

 

I tried scoring the panel line and bending them down. This worked for a while. They broke while dryfitting. Eventually I had to glue them.

 

 

Different versions of Mirage III have some lumps and antennae that have to be separated. The ones on the underside of wings are easy. The antennae on the fuselage belly are a little harder.

 

Now, this is where I've had the most trouble. The insert under the cockpit fits badly. Or at least I couldn't fit it properly. I tried for a while, but couldn't find where was a source of my fit problem. I tried deepening the fuselage cut outs but it only helped a little.

 

 

Some filling and sanding was required.

 

 

After that I fit the intakes. They fit pretty good, only a tiniest bit of a seam to sand and fill. The engineering of the kit parts made me worry about the six piece assembly. Oh wait. Seven piece. There is a large insert in the underfuselage part.

 

My worries were justified. I couldn't handle the back seam well. There will be some filler needed. A lot to make it least noticable.

 

 

The fit in the front wasn't too good either. By some clamping and wiggling I managed to minimise the seams on the intake joint, at the cost of the joint on the underside of the fuselage.

 

A part of the problem could be the lower fuselage insert. Next time I'll try to add it at a later stage. Or at least check if it's a viable option. I had to clamp the joint on the insert.

 

 

Tiniest bit of filler was needed on the top fuselage joint, and a little on the intakes to fuselage joint.

 

 

A lot of filler was required on the underside of the fuselage.

 

 

 

After the seams were mostly handled, I attached the flaps.

 

It's interesting that the F.1 is only a little bigger than the III, yet due to the wing configuration, seems almost twice as big.

 

 

 

Now, I'll post something on that later. But I tried to find a nice, silver paint. I experimented a little with paints I have. Yet, I chose Vallejo Model Air Chrome. Lovelly colour. Not really chrome, but it seems like aluminium.

 

What made me choose this paint was the finish. The difference in metallic parts in paint is absolutelly insane. Vallejo is super fine, while the Gunze H8, while nice on its own, is much more visible.

 

 

One thing I need to say right now. Don't use that paint. O.M.G. It didn't dry fully in a week. A whole week and it's still sticky. I did thin it down with Tamiya alcohol thinner. But I tested it raw and it still doesn't dry. Perhaps if You'd spray super thin layers it would be better. But I did try that on a test piece and, while better, it's still not dry fully. And I doubt it will ever be fully dry. One thing to note, I painted both, the test piece and the model Gunze gloss black first and let the paint dry for about 24 hours or a little more.

It is a bit frustraiting, ok... more than a bit. Only after i painted the entire model I found that it's a known problem with Vallejo metallic paints. A shame really, as the finish is extremelly nice.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[Thadeus]

Ok, I'm trying do to an update here. Apparently some AI on the server sees what I'm about to post and gives some server error bs. Oh... well I'll try again later.

[Sebastijan]

Having both of these in stash, I am following your work with interest! Nice work so far!

[Thadeus]

Thanks Sevastijan. I can recommend both kits, despite some issues.

 

So let's try another update, eh? Here goes nothing...

 

So I was long overdue to do that. I made myself some paint chips of my own. From left to right - Gunze H8 silver, Tamiya X11 chrome silver, Tamiya XF-16 aluminium, Vallejo Model Air Chrome and Vallejo Model Air Steel. I was forced to do so, as I'm struggling with silver finishes, be it NMF or just Silver Laquer. One thing I noted, the Vallejo paints when applied by brush are amazing. Hardly any texture of silver flakes. Amazing. And once sprayed they look like that too. Just take a look at the difference in paint texture.

 

 

Gunze H8 I have a problem with. It seems to need a billion of layers over gloss black. Here I probably didn't add one, two or twenty layers.

 

 

I do like the Tamiya aluminium. It's a nice shade, sprays lovelly. I can't really spray it smooth. Same applies to most of the Tamiya paints. Sitll, Vallejo has such an amazing finish I just couldn't resist. As you can see in some photos, the paints didn't dry well enough and were damaged by handling.

 

 

So despite my paint not drying I decided on doing something stupid. I added more paint. Even better. I added more of the paint that I had trouble drying. The main colour was Chrome, so I took some Steel and sprayed some panels - the nose, intakes, fuselage "band" and a couple of panels on the wings as well as the exhaust shroud. Then I took that Steel, mixed  itwith a little of Vallejo model air black and brown. and misted some selected panels.

 

 

I'm pretty full of myself right now I know. But i like the look of these picked panels. More please!

 

 

Steel doesn't show that much on the pictures. Only in certain angles and lighting conditions. Which I find nice.

 

So I took some dilluted steel and brushed it on some small panels. Then I took steel with a drop of white and picked one or two panels as well. Somewhere here I managed to rub off some chrome from the leading edges of wing and tailfin. That's a bummer. But since the kit was already problematic, I decided on doing something stupid again. And I gloss coated the entire thing. Just like that. And I gotta say, the top coat is dry and hard as rock! But I don't think it's the way it should be done.

 

 

One more crazy thing I also did I replaced the AIM-9 launchers with simple fairings. It would seem the jets from that period usually flew with only tanks or only a single missile on the centerline - a Matra 530 I believe. Some quick respraying was all that was needed. Sadly I did that way before I rubbed off the paint, as I would just spray the leading edges too.

 

Oh. Please note the intakes. I might have screwed up something here too.

 

 

 

So... I gotta say I dig this little Mirage III kit. It has plenty of options. Unfortunatly I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing when I assembled the model.

See, the instructions show You that You need to put parts b4 and b5 respectively on the model.

 

 

But the B5 and B4 parts are not correct for this Mirage!! The shock cone is much too large. The kit provides three options for the intake shock cones, two of which I show here. They are of two types, so there are two smaller ones and one larger. The pic is from a second kit I bought.

 

Sadly, there is no easy way of fixing that mistake. So if You build this kit, please be carefull what You put on the model. There might be more mistakes that I'm just not aware of. I gotta say I'm still kind of angry at myself for not spotting that, as it's quite obvious now.

 

 

 

So since I was so annoyed with myself on the Mirage III kit I figured I could do some modelling mistakes on the F.1. I'm building the Spanish sand coloured version. I sprayed Tamiya XF16 here and was quite happy with how it went on. I sanded the top layer with a paper towel and started masking. Wings, taiplanes, fueltank. Only once I reached the nose It got me thinking there was something wrong with pics. The silver underside looked so much like white or off white... Well... apparently it's FS36622. Shoot.

 

Oh well. I'm going to relax a bit and hopefully go back to these two in a week, month or a year from now.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great time modelling.

 

 

[Thadeus]

Ok, last progress and discoveries really drained my willingness to do any modelling.

 

First, after procuring some 36622 I managed to spray the undersides of the F.1. Neat. 

 

 

With that stunning success I proceeded to paint the main colours. The base colour is lightened gunze H79, brown is actually H310 and green is H309. I didn't like the colour of the raw H79 so I added some light gray. After all the camouflage was done I had to do some resprays, and since I didn't write down my proportions and I didn't leave any paint mixed for touchups I had to do it again.

Long story short I failed, but managed to do some highlights and darkspots with it. You can almost see them. Only the right wing got an entire new sand colour, as I botched both the green and brown spot at the tip.

 

 

With camo done, all that was left was to decal the model. Decals were awesome. Easy to use and I had no issues with them.

 

 

 

Now... for the Mirage III I was quite apprehensive. Decals look very low quality on the sheet. The print is just about ok, but the amount of the clear decal film and the way its placed made me worry.

 

 

 

Decals however behaved quite nicelly. Went down with no issues. The only troublesome area were the large red intake decals. They didn't go all the way to the intake tip. i suppose You should paint them corresponding red. There were however additional two red stripes - I suppose for other camouflage options. So I just used them there.

 

 

Eventually decals came out a bit wrinkly in this place. I wasn't brave enough to remove the clear decal film from them. They looked like Eduards decals, so I hear that might be an option. I was cutting the excess clear film from the tail decals and the clear film actually started to lift. So perhaps the weird clear film is actually a feature in this model. I have no idea.

 

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great week.

 

 

[Thadeus]

Just so this update isn't all about the Mirage III C, here is the comparison of the ejection seats in both kits. The IIIC is to the left, the F.1 is to the right.

 

 

 

And the Mirage III C is done. What a lovelly little kit. I kept thinking that the entire build. There are a few troublesome spots - such as the underside of the nose and fuselage, but nothing major. Apparently I made a mistake, as the radome shoudl be dark gray, not black, so should be the radioelectric panels on the fin. The top one I had to paint by hand. Not the best of ideas on my part, but I was a bit aprehensive of masking on top of all the decals.

 

 

I'm always having hard time deciding on the finish of silver jets. I'd love them in gloss, but it feels a bit wrong, too shiny. So I took the Gunze semi gloss and went with it. Model lost most of its shine, but it still feels really nice.

 

 

 

I had to paint some of the parts silver again. And again, I chose Vallejo Model Air steel. What a lovelly colour. On matt black it looks a bit dulled down and that makes it interesting choice. What was interesting as well it seemed to dry pretty nice. I sprayed very thin layers this time (like 3 or 4), but again, on the small surfaces. I'll have to give it a try on some other model. I actually have an idea for my next project...

 

 

So that is all I guess with the IIIC. Can't wait to get the F.1 done too. And start my new project.

 

Thanks for stopping by!

[Sebastijan]

she's such a beaut! can't wait to start mine!

[BastianD]

Really like the different metal shade that you were able to achieve, very nice model!

[Thadeus]

On 10/30/2023 at 11:45 AM, Sebastijan said:

she's such a beaut! can't wait to start mine!

 

Thanks! By all means, get at it! It's a very nice kit. I know I'll build at least a couple more.

 

21 hours ago, BastianD said:

Really like the different metal shade that you were able to achieve, very nice model!

 

Thanks! I can say a lot of bad things about Vallejo Model Air metalics, but they look amazing when sprayed. I'm going to start another project just to check if painting them in very thin layers helps with the drying.

[Thadeus]

And I'm happy to say, my Mirage project is done!

 

This seems to be my favourite scheme for the F.1. And I'm pretty happy I got to build it.

 

I chose not to add missiles, as I've seen jets from ALA14 flying mostly unarmed in this scheme, most of the time with just one fuel tank. There was apparently a 4 missile loadout possible too. This is fine though.

 

 

 

Stuff I'm not happy about is the seamline on the nose. I've checked, and on my other single seater it's way less noticable. So next time I'll stick to building two halves with nose pieces attached. This time however I better managed the wing joint. I could've gotten a little more contrast between the radome and the anti glare stripe.

I got myself a cutting template for circles, so that might change in the future with better masks.

 

 

I also need to pay more attention applying decals on the nose gear doors. I put the '40' upside down. A few panel lines here and there should have been deepened. I also never seem to get the searchlights a good representation.

 

 

And just for fun, here are my other two Mirage F.1s. Shame Special Hobby hasn't issued an F.1CT.

 

 

And both the F.1CE and IIIC.

 

 

Thanks for stopping by!

 

[barkin mad]

Well now don't these 4 Mirages look exceptionally fine.

 

------------

 

[cpoud117]

Nice work and lovely collection!

[BastianD]

8 hours ago, Thadeus said:

 

Thanks! By all means, get at it! It's a very nice kit. I know I'll build at least a couple more.

 

 

Thanks! I can say a lot of bad things about Vallejo Model Air metalics, but they look amazing when sprayed. I'm going to start another project just to check if painting them in very thin layers helps with the drying.

I used Vallejo Metal paints when building the F-104C Starfighter, really nice paint with excellent result. I sprayed several thin layers which dried quick enough.

however, yes they dry slower than regular Vallejo paint.

Patience and time are key!

[Thadeus]

On 11/5/2023 at 2:19 PM, barkin mad said:

Well now don't these 4 Mirages look exceptionally fine.

 

------------

 

 

Thank You very much! I'm quite hooked on SH Mirage F.1's. I'm afraid I might be hooked on Mirage III's as well.

 

 

On 11/5/2023 at 5:02 PM, cpoud117 said:

Nice work and lovely collection!

 

Thank You very much! I hope it will grow.

 

On 11/5/2023 at 10:19 PM, BastianD said:

I used Vallejo Metal paints when building the F-104C Starfighter, really nice paint with excellent result. I sprayed several thin layers which dried quick enough.

however, yes they dry slower than regular Vallejo paint.

Patience and time are key!

 

Thanks a lot. I'll do just that. I'm not about to give up that easilly on such a great looking finish.

I've seen some comparison online about some of the Vallejo metallic paints. It showed something similar to what I achieved. I generally spray thin coats of paint, but these Vallejo metalics have a great coverage. So next time I'll try to spray them even thinner. I'll also try the Vallejo Metal Color line as I've heard some very good stuff about them.