Colombia Kfir C10 Revell+Isracast

[red Dog]

Converting a Mirage III to a Kfir in 1/32 has been on my wish list for quite a long time. 

 

A few years ago I sourced one of the last conversion available from Isracast but unfortunately lacking the gear legs. 

 

I started collecting documentation about the IAF Kfirs and even got the new Mr paint special box for IAF paint and then I found a picture of a Colombia Kfir block 60 with a weird looking nose and 5th generation weaponry.

The appeal of such an old aircraft design dating back to the seventies, so often updated and releasing Spices and GBU-49 was too hard to resist and I postponed (once again) the IAF Kfir

 

The main kit will be the old revell mirage V. A century ago I sourced blue thunder for a few euros (before it was commonly seen for 50 euros) Pretty good model shapewise, 

not much detail but that's a non issue since all details will come from the resin conversion. Without surprise with these old kits, full engraving will be needed.

 

The missing gear from the Isracast will be adressed with a Gear Factor Mirage III set but I still don't know how I will adress the fact that the Kfir had reinforced main landing gear.
I thought the missing gear from Isracast would be no problem but back then I didn't know yet that the Kfir had reinforced gears… 

 

Decals for the colombian Kfir will be homemade and masks cut with a Silhouette Cameo 4

 

The Colombian Kfirs were bought circa 1989 from Israel's C2 surplus and upgraded to C7 at the sale. They were then further converted with the help of Israel industries toC12 standards.

Another batch was bought from Israel's C7 surplus in 2007-2008 and these were bought to C10 standard at the sale. 
The C10 are therefore more Advanced than the C12 and are Link16 capable which the C12 are not. (unless a C10 send them the data)
The model chosen here will be one of the late C10.

 

Loadout will be made of the Spice from Isracast on centerline, the Raphael Litening pod on the chin pylon and a GBU-49 on the other chin, two Pythons on the outboard wing pylon and I will also probably scratchbuild the Derby AA ER missiles for the inner wing station.

 

The end result should be Something like this:

 

 

Documentation used will range from the Lela press bible about Mirage III in export variant warmly recommended by Thierry Laurent to the AJ-Press - Monografie lotnicze. #027. IAI Kfir that I will mostly used for the 3 view Drawings and an article in the Air Fan about Colombia Kfirs, and many references I accumulated about the Kfirs over the time. 

 

The main differences between the C2/C7 IAF kfirs and the COA C10 are:

(feel free to add anything I might have missed) 

- The windscreen is one piece, I'll probably sand the revell part and polish it accordingly as I do not have the Tools to make a vac formed windscreen.

- The tail needs two small horizontal surfaces on the top and a forward fairing for the jammer system (Elbit/Elisra SPS-45v6)

- That same jammer system will slighly modify the rear end underside and the bottom of the nose fairing

- The IP needs to be scratched with modern MFDs and ICP. Seat Wise, I thought the C10 had the Mk10 but it seems they retained the older Kfir C2 seat. 

- An air to air refuel probe needs to be added

- GPS dome need to be added

- Blade antenna forward of the nose gear bay need to be added 

- The C10 nose is different and sourcing the nose was the achille heel of this project. Luckily fellow modeller Cheetah came to the rescue months ago and kindly agreed to help with a cast of his own nose made for his outstanding cheetah. I can't thank you enough Nick. Without you I wouldn't be building this one. 

- Weapons will be sourced from ISracast (Spice), the Academy Sufa (Python and pods), GBU -49 probably from CMK GBU-12 and the Derby will be scratchbuilt I guess.

 

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by red Dog

[red Dog]

1. The wings

 

Panel lines seems to be correct so I used them as guide to engrave new ones before sanding the original ones.

Once again, I gave the new tamiya tool a try but although this work great for straight lines, I can't find a good way to make curve with this tool. So I usually end up replacing the expensive tamiya engraving head with a needle.

My first pass of engraving is usually messy and needs a lot of correction with superglue at later stages.

 

  

 

Three main steps need to be performed to convert to a Kfir wing:
- Adding the dogtooth,

- Replacing the gear bay

- Filling the Notch on the leading edge. 

 

The main gear bay is no real problem to install. Careful removing of the plastic on the underwing is all it takes to mate the sanded resin part. 

 

The part fits nicely and alignement Inside the fuselage was checked as well before gluing. That fuselage cut is a bit harder to make.
Isracast calls for filling the airbrake probably to replaced them with decals, but I haven't done that yet and I am not sure I will.  

 

Installing the dogtooth, I failed to realise a problem with the Isracast offering which are too short when compared to the blueprints. 
Unfortunately I found out just after cutting the wing.

     

 

I was tempted to leave it like that and glue it anyway but eventually decided to attempt to fix the issue by moving the dogtooth just a bit more forward. Not "too much" of a visible issue at the aileron level doing that so I cut the other wing accordingly. The light position (engraving) will need to be displaced further aft on the resin part but that's no big deal. 

 

After successfully trying on the other wing I corrected the first wing by replacing a small bit of the plastic wing at the rear of the dogtooth resin part. There is a small curve issue but if you don't compare it to the drawing, it remains invisible and will be further tamed down by sanding anyway.

 

 

     

 

Finally the notch in the leading edge has been filled by plasticard and squadron putty. 

Off to some long sanding sessions….

 

 

Edited August 11, 2020 by red Dog

[jenshb]

A little heads up on sanding the windshield, although you may be fortunate if the male side of the mould was a bit rounded; there will be refractions visible that hints at the original shape by sanding and reshaping the outside.  When Wingman Models first brought out their Latin American Kfir C10/C12 conversion from the Kinetic kit, they advised the modeller to sand and polish the outside of the kit windshield to create the one-piece curved windshield as they claimed customers would not want a vacformed windshield.  The built up model they had on their stand in Telford that year was modified as such, and when looking closely, you could see from the reflections that the inside of the windshield was flat.  If the old Revell windshield has a softer curve and is thick enough, you may be able to sand the inside as well to make it more curved to reduce that problem.

[alain11]

hi

you chose the " hard way"  I will follow your thread with huge interest 

Alain

[Starfighter]

Nice topic! No need for special tools to do the windshield - crush molding should be suitable. Just make a proper master, heat a bit of foil and pull it over the master with your hands. Did it years ago to do a new F-5 windshield and it worked absolutely fine. I even used the original part as master back in the day. 

 

[red Dog]

20 hours ago, jenshb said:

A little heads up on sanding the windshield, although you may be fortunate if the male side of the mould was a bit rounded; there will be refractions visible that hints at the original shape by sanding and reshaping the outside.  When Wingman Models first brought out their Latin American Kfir C10/C12 conversion from the Kinetic kit, they advised the modeller to sand and polish the outside of the kit windshield to create the one-piece curved windshield as they claimed customers would not want a vacformed windshield.  The built up model they had on their stand in Telford that year was modified as such, and when looking closely, you could see from the reflections that the inside of the windshield was flat.  If the old Revell windshield has a softer curve and is thick enough, you may be able to sand the inside as well to make it more curved to reduce that problem.

Thanks Jens, good tip

I'll keep that in mind when I get there. 

 

20 hours ago, alain11 said:

you chose the " hard way"  I will follow your thread with huge interest 

Alain

LOL, thanks. Coming from one of the top member of the very closed "weird mirage" club, It is appreciated a lot 8)

 

 

19 hours ago, Starfighter said:

Nice topic! No need for special tools to do the windshield - crush molding should be suitable. Just make a proper master, heat a bit of foil and pull it over the master with your hands. Did it years ago to do a new F-5 windshield and it worked absolutely fine. I even used the original part as master back in the day. 

 

Even that sounds scary to me  

I'll try to gather some information about this and see what I can do.

Because I have dozen of question from your post above , like which foil do you use, how do you heat it etc etc

Thanks for the pointer.

 

 

[Starfighter]

I just used material from a vacuformed blister packaging which was heated with a simple heir dryer back in the day. It seems the pics are long gone I'm afraid... 

[alain11]

hi

one thing that you could try to fix the windscreen , is to make a pattern of the kit part with Tamiya tape , then , cut a new piece from this pattern into a very thin ... and flexible  Rodoide sheet ....fast , and easy doable .....i agree the shape won't be 100% accurate , especially on the top of the frame ,(  sure that it can be done if you take time to try ) but it's could be a solution ... that's what I did on the cheetah  

Alain

[Cheetah11]

Great start and and interesting scheme Olivier. I am watching with interest.

 

The Italeri undercarriage is about 3mm too long for a Mirage IIII but almost right for a Kfir as the oleo travel on the Kfir is longer than on the Mirage. (The Kfir  undercarriage leg gets shortened by a compression rod during the retraction sequence) 

 

If you get the SAC aftermarket legs for the Italeri kit it should be fine.

 

You might want to have a look at the loadout.  I think the loadouts in the photos were for the camera and publicity purposes.. You won't go very far with those loadouts.

 

Cheers

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

[Mark Jackson]

Erm.. the Colombian version has extra panels to hide the coke.  

[red Dog]

14 hours ago, Cheetah11 said:

Great start and and interesting scheme Olivier. I am watching with interest.

The Italeri undercarriage is about 3mm too long for a Mirage IIII but almost right for a Kfir as the oleo travel on the Kfir is longer than on the Mirage. (The Kfir  undercarriage leg gets shortened by a compression rod during the retraction sequence) 

If you get the SAC aftermarket legs for the Italeri kit it should be fine.

 

You might want to have a look at the loadout.  I think the loadouts in the photos were for the camera and publicity purposes.. You won't go very far with those loadouts.

Cheers

Nick

 

I already sourced the Gear factor legs for the Revell Mirage III/Kfir. 

I agree with the loadout, No doubt it was a marketting showoff. But I can't resist it for now. We'll see when I get there anyway. 

[red Dog]

2. The tail

 

The Revell tail (like all the rest actually) matches finely the blueprints.

 

The forward air intake supplied by Isracast is easily installed by cutting alongside a panel line on both side of the tail.
The panel lines are symetrical on the kit but not on the real aircrfat so I had to correct a few errors as I did the initial engraving, and it's not perfect yet.

Then whole asembly is glued together

 

 

The C10 tail received multiple upgrade and the most noticeable is the jammer system antenna on the leading edge of the tail that needs to be scratched. A piece of 2mm plasticad will be used for that purpose.

 

 

I first traced a line just under the tail light and joining the pitot and then cut a 2mm fence to be able to slide the Elbit/Elisra SPS-45v6 antenna. The plasticard is then shaped accordingly accordingly.

 

 

Alu tape is then placed around the antenna:

 

 

The Kfir C10 also sported two typical horizontal surface aligned behind with the jammer antenna. these were built with 0.3 and 0.5mm plasticards.
The isracast bits were also glued in placed and some bolts were added were necessary for further details. They will be sanded down later on. 
The rudder lines top and Bottom were cut as you can crealy see a gap on the real tail. 

Except some putty at the resin/plastic junction and further rivetting that will be done after priming and panel line correction, the tail is now complete

 

 

 

I might just replace the rudder actuator fairing which is really ugly

Edited August 13, 2020 by red Dog

[dodgem37]

Good show.

 

Sincerely,

Mark

[red Dog]

3. The guns

 

The old revell kit doesn't have any detail for the guns except for the two trenches under the fuselage and intakes.

Luckily Isracast provides all the details needed with photoetch.

 

 

The trenches are too short for the PE part and were lenghtened with a semi oval file.

 

 

The gun barrel was made with a metal piece inserted into the rear of the recess.
The gun brake is also supplied in PE and was shaped round first then both side were flattened and bent 90°

 

 

 

The trick is to adapt the round shape so the side of the gun brake align nicely with the long ellipse PE part.

 

 

 

Not perfect yet but already much better than no detail at all ...

 

[dodgem37]

Good show.  From what publication did you get your plans?

 

Sincerely,

Mark