From Mirage to the American kfir . end of the story ..Dec 24

[alain11]

Hi

 

Thank you gents for watching , and taking some interest to this thread ......today , I start the peripheral things , as the front gear .....of course , Isracast supplied this part as a metal part ....Well , we can't say the details are "sharp"even if it's a .....good base to work with , it lack of some stuffs ...the part ...

 

 

the landing lights seem to be  oversized once fit to the gear leg ( my opinion) , so , I redo them smaller , cut into styrène rod and other stuff etc...

 

 

I decided to"rework" the kit gear leg instead of the metal part .I prefer to start from zero, than to removed details , sand, file , polish, clean etc .. the metal leg . .... The kit part is far from being perfect , its lower part is wrong , I first thought to redo it , but there were a lot of work to achieve a nicer result  , my  skill level stops here  ..... too bad , I'll live with it ....

 

 

 

 

I know.........the left landing light is higher than the right one .........sorry , an other thing to live with 

 

 

As you can see , things don't work always fine ......thank you for watching 

to be continued

Alain 

Edited December 15, 2015 by alain11

[Youngtiger1]

Just found this WIP and Alain you are doing incredible work on this project. It will be one of a kind

[LSP_Kevin]

Really awesome work, Alain!

 

Kev

[mywifehatesmodels]

Holy....okay, I'm not allowed to say that, but don't know what else to say!

 

John

[Starfighter]

Très impressionant, Alain! 

[dodgem37]

Great work.  Love your detailing.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[tucohoward]

Really nice work Alain! Love the detail.

 

Jay

[Guest Peterpools]

Alain

Super work on the gear and believe me, it looks great and so much better then I could ever do

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[alain11]

Hi

I am back on the bench , this time with the main gears . There is a few work to get something " correct" ( I hope I managed it ....I tried ) here is the Isracast parts : as with the nose gear , the cast is not  very good , especially the small cylindres attached to the legs  ... the parts

 

The Kfir main gears are slightly different from the original Mirage , these some stuffs that must been added , like  connecting rods , and wires cables etc... thankfully , isracast provide different closer views at different angles to help to understand things ....tough luck these pictures are black / white , but are very useful .....here is the final result , .not perfect , but that looks like ..I replaced the small cylinders 

 

 

 

the gear doors . nothing special to talk about , I just added the locks on the main doors( in white)

 

 

painted and weathered ......

 

 

 strangely , I didn't find any pictures of 500 liters tanks hanged under kfir wings ....too bad .... the paint is total improvisation 

...  

 

 

and finally  , a touch of red colour : the ACMI pod made from a"sidewinder" missile 

 

 

next stage , the painting ... thank you for watching 

Alain

Edited December 21, 2015 by alain11

[alain11]

Hi

 

the next stage :At last , the first spray : there are several white lines on the leading edge as well as along the fuselage , so I sprayed white paint in order to mask them , I did the same with the red lines on the wings 

 

 

the next step , the underneath . I used the Gunse paint ref: H 317 . I sprayed this colour without seeking any weathering effect , Just covering the dark green plastic 

 

 

 

then ,I post shading lines more or less , it depend of your mood , and how do you feel things ...once this is done , I lightened  some panels or some areas to give "relief" to the colour 

 

 

 

final stage : I sprayed clear varnish ( Klir) and a black wash into the lines .at last a light weathering as oil stains here and there  ......some decals are already in place . A matt varnish will seal all of this at the end

 

 

 

 

thank you for watching

Alain 

[dutik]

Great! Really impressive!

 

 

Looks like Mirage UCs are en vogue now. There are some more scratchbuild/improved Mirage UCs  in the forum at the moment...

- dutik

[Guest Peterpools]

Alain

Holy Cow ... awesome painting and weathering.

Keep 'em coming

Peter

[geedubelyer]

That is a cracking model Alain, good job.

 

Do you always go with a matt topcoat as the sheen you have on the model at the moment looks superb to my eyes? The underside often has a slight sheen because of the thin film of fluids and oils built up.

By contast I'm sure there would be patches of very matt paint on the upper surfaces, particularly on the upper wing surfaces where the exposure to full sun is greatest.

 

Keep it up, I'm eager to see the build completed.

[scvrobeson]

That paint work on the underside is really nice looking.   Very pretty paint work and shading.  Look forward to seeing the top paint on it

 

 

 

 

 

Matt 

[Zero77]

hi

I took a look at your F 104 , and saw you used it . the inner details are "crispy" .... ,the  Aires outer details are nicer ..aren't they?

Alain

 

Sorry Alain, i did not see your question. I've used both, the Aires F-4 on previous F-4 builds and the Eduard F-104 on my Starfighter. I dont remember exactly but i think that on the Aires exhausts, there are small surface details that are not visible on the real stuff (as it is on the F-16 GE exhaust, too). They certainly wanted to represent dot welding or something, but it should not be really visible in 1/32 in my opinion.

Anyway, it's only a small detail and not very noticeable (you have to look quite close), and both look very good to me.

Edited December 23, 2015 by Zero77