red Dog

The pilot has its hands on throttle and stick - he's HOTAS it's the SUFA pilot, not the right helmet but that will do. Still need to add a few details before fitting the IP

More work on the IP: The final layout parts have been selected from the Airscale PE and some bits from the scrap PE box: Once satisfied with the whole IP, the different components were glued in place and given a splash of paint Some gross attempts at micro painting to paint buttons Then hi gloss varnish and the Airscale decals The glareshield were redone with aluminium foil, A HUD was also added Final result: and the real one: Macro photography really helps seeing the default on your work but once in pit, none of these are strikingly visible anymore (luckily!) :

Nice work Nick What are these panels, are you printing them to scale and then populating them with knobs?

The Mk6 is supplied in the Isracast set but it's an imbroglio of harnesses and belts all over the place. Initially I'd guess that the modernized Kfir COA, like the C7 would have been upgraded with Mk10 bang seat but closer study of the pictures revealed that the KFIR C10 retained the old Mk6 ejection seats. Here's picture of the isracast rendition in the C2 kit, I think the C7 kit has the Mk10 The belts and these cushions will be removed as I need to fit the Academy Sufa pilot in there. I'll post pictures soon as I'm currently working on the cockpit

outstanding. The hind is so impressive. Your model is equally so

Thanks Lothar, your support in this topic has really helped. WIP post is like a therapy to keep your motivation up which really helps the build to progress So thank you very much

Thank you very much Greg, how's your AF-1 doing . Work on the IP started: All details from the Isracast IP have been sanded flat, the glareshield removed - a new one will be shaped later on. Airscale bits were chosen and glued on 0.3mm plasticard, the center column holding the UFC has been reshaped and airscale panels close enough to the Kfir panel have been selected.

I'm curious as well to see if the isracast bits will fit the new Italeri mirage. Especially the nose. I'll send some good vibes your way, you'll need all the support you can get

Started the day with working on the KFIR 1/32 model converting the cockpit. Had a quick lunch and spent the sunny and surprising warm afternoon at my local FBO painting half of our aeroclub logo on a freshly replaced rudder on one of our PA-28. not modelling but quite closely related. Masks were done with the cameo 4 All in all a well spent day in solo

I received some more goodies that will allow me to press towards the finish line: The Spice 1000 from Isracast and some airscale cockpit dials for the C10 cockpit conversion. No kit (or aftermarket) was started so quickly after receiving it and I immediately started the Spice as it was the last bit I missed for the weapon load. The gliding bomb comes smartly in 4 pieces +2 PE wings. detail is crisp and assembly can't go wrong with a perfectly staright and aligned (long) weapon) Tail unit bomb body nose unit optics in transparent resin. 2 wings in PE Each piece is inserted into the next one with a smart alignement notch and in my eagerness to assemble it I almost missed the fact that even the transparent optic part has the alignement, so think before cutting is something I should never forget The parts layout make also for easy painting The only remark I could make is that the wings details have been mirrored so unless I screwed up I always ended up with the wing attachement point one different side where they should both be on the same side: bottom. So i quickly fixed this with a bit of plasticard. Not that it matters quite much. All stores are now completed after a gloss coat, decaling, gloss coat, weathering and then a semi flat coat of varnish: On to the cockpit conversion now... Thanks for looking

Let me materialize the image for you it's her 1/48 small brother from revell, but exactly in your vision. I also want to bring this to 1/32 with that Italeri kit

Very nice and Inspiring.

No guts no glory is what i thought when I saw you fixing that issue. I am so glad I chose the D/N rather than the single seat. I probably would not have the same courage as you to fix this Hat's off

got mines too. The Mirage one is already being put to good use to model the retracting gears of the Kfir. Very useful pictures in there. The Skyhawk one is saved for that AF-1 project later on. I already learned a few things especially about the aerodynamic Slats of the scooter. love that picture of the hard turn with one slat retracted and the other out, pure inspiration for a in flight model

I used them and are quite nice, a bit stiff on their pose but that can be addressed easily with a bit of work. Beside the pose modification, the pilot missed a lot of accessories like his parachute and flying googles. Not sure it's suitable for a US aircraft but if you can get your hands on the P51 figure, that's where I would start.

After an overall coat of X-22 I couldn't resit long to see if the masks matched the decals. A combined use of masks and homemade decal was the only solution for the squadron patch on the tail. - the Silhouette couldn't cope with the fine details of the patch - the homemade decals don't print white and usually applying lighter coloured decals on a dark fuselage colour doesn't work so well. So the sqn patch shape was cut in the silhouette and applied on the tail after a white coat. The sqn patch was then made and printed on transparent inkjet decal paper - and after a light coat of X-22 again was applied to the model: The macro photography makes the white overtake worse than it is, it's barely visible with the naked eye.

I had my first masking marathon Spent a whole day at the bench just painting the Colombian roundels, flags, serials and some larger stencils on the KFIR. It was well worth it: The Colombia roundels were by far the hardest to paint. I started with a white circle, then protected the centre star and painted yellow. Then reapplied all masks except the centre star and removed the blue masks and painted blue. Then covered the blue and removed the red and painted the red parts. The smaller stencils I could cut with the cameo 4 were the "no pise" markings. Masks were placed, sprayed with white then with red. After that the serials were a joke to do and the cherry on top of the cake was the KFIR logo. the COA was too small to be cut correctly and will be added with homemade decals later on. Great day at the bench but my eyes are bleeding.

Started weathering s with lighter colour variation: And I couldn't resist but to paint the part that really sold me making this conversion. I have no idea why but this specific area really sold me on trying this venture:

Thank you Alain, but I'm not there yet. I still have the windshield to modify and this will rather be the deciding factor if this one makes it. In the meantime I unmasked the wings, it's always a great moment to discover the effect. There's a huge contrast between flat grey and bright red, this will be toned down with the next gloss coat. I still need to further work on some panel lines.

Very nice. Don't be shy on the base picture, it looks great too

Thank you Lothar, I appreciate your interest. It won't actually be on the table rather above the table as I intend to display something like this: The gear in transit should be very dynamic That picture seems also to answer one of my previous question about the colour of the gear bay. I see yellow chromate in there, which is how I painted the main gear bay

Finally some paint... Obviously there is no decal for this model and everything will be homemade. I started by doing decals artwork for this one but knew that the light coloured decals on the darker colour skin wouldn't work. Luckily I had access temporarily to a cameo 4 and cut some masks. I tried to cut stencils but it seems these were either too small or my experience with the hardware is too limited Anyway, In the end I will try with a mix of masks and decals. All this to explain this weird looking first colour patchwork It's always easier to mask a red line with a single strip before base coat rather than paint it after base coat with a double strip which is most of the time in difficult places. The white basecoat is mostly for future decal or masks location Same patchwork on the bottom and with a very crude pre-shade with black Masking was done with Tamiya tape strips and silhouette masks. These red lines really colour the KFIR wings The reason I masked the tail squadron patch is that my only chance to make this work is with a decal but I need a white background. Can't print homemade decal in white and yellow and expect it to stand out on dark grey. So 2 steps: 1 mask for background, then decal on top. Top surfaces were sprayed with Gunze H305 and post shaded with a darker IJN Tamiya grey. Very subtle colour variation, but it's there. Bottom surfaces were painted with a 50/50 mix of Gunze H311 and H308. few spots needing corrections due to me not being careful enough. The border line between the top and bottom colours were masked with white Tamiya curve tape so have a straight curved edge between the 2 colours

I also elected to open the aux intake doors. Something rarely seen from Mirage III in flight models. When speed is not high enough these doors are open. Since this one will probably be displayed in a take off phase, I needed to open the doors. I elected not to cut the door off but to rather use an X-Acto blade to go through the plastic at the 3 aft sides and make a single pass on the front side. This allowed me to push the door inside at the desired angle. The harder to do was to clean the mess after the cuts and thin the aft wall to give a better representation of the aircraft skin. This was done with the proxxon tool and a conical rotating head as my other hand pushed the door in with a toothpick. The left pylon wasn't modified yet, just placed in its position. It looks like the Isracast pylon are not perfect for the chin pylon of the block 60 Kfirs but I can live with the small detail. It was well worth doing. It wasn't as complicated as I thought and it really changes everything. The right chin pylon will be loaded with the targeting pod. It's only placed in position and not glued yet.

I finished modifying the pylons. Center line and outer missile rails as good as is but the left chin and both the middle wing pylon needed modification. The chin pylons are different, the right one used for the pod is the usual C2 pylon but the left one loaded with a GBU-49 is a C7 type and needs to be modified. I started by scaling the shape from a side picture and then sanded the pylon accordingly. It's not perfect but the real showstopper was that the bomb was too much forward with the regular pylon (I suppose changing the airflow into the intake?) and with the modified pylon, the bomb is loaded a bit more aft. The middle wing pylons are meant for the fuel tanks and are not suitable at all for AA missiles. I modified them by flipping them upside down relocating the wing inserts and made them shorter to match the picture I posted earlier. I also had to modify their angle as I wanted all AA missiles to point in the same direction. So I took the outer wing missile rails as reference. Missiles rails were taken from a F4 Revell Phantom and glued to the modified resin pylon. The centre line was only slightly modified by cutting the forward and aft bomb attachement point and I will create a new set in the middle for the Spice 1000. The Colombian KFIR centre line pylon does not have the big countermeasures ejectors like the original C2/C7 had. Also visible on the following picture is the difference between left and right chin pylon:

Now with a question: Anyone know the spec (or name) for these Derby ER pylons? The Isracast kit supplies the wing bag pylon but these are obviously not the same. I am thinking about flipping them over (to get the correct forward angle) and reshape the rear of the resin but looking for such pylons on the web didn't yield much results. Do we know how they are called. The smaller missile guide is sorted, this is the same as the python missile in the first post above and have been sourced from a Revell Phantom