32nd Mirage IIID2Z (with ScaleWorx conversion set)

[Mistral]

Note also that the upper camouflage wraps around to the underside wing leading edges. First colour is the buff and per Nick's earlier comments, this has quite an orange hue - unfortunately the artificial light messes with the cell phone colour saturation.. but you get the idea :

 

 

Once the buff has been left to dry for 24 hours, it's time for masking. This is the early SAAF hard edge camouflage - no feathering here - so the best tool for the job is the Tamiya 2mm wide flexible masking tape. I wish they'd bring this out in 1mm width which will make it even easier to follow those tight curves. In places, the tape is just not flexible enough and must be sliced and pushed down to prevent any of the green paint from bleeding through :

 

 

 

Standard masking tape to fill in the centre sections and then Prestic (our version of Blutac) worms used to seal off the gaps between the flexible tape and the masking tape. This was a 2 hour job and is not a very exciting part of the build...

 

 

[Mistral]

Then the green paint was layered in making sure that the areas where the flexible tape was lifting were continually pushed down - looks like frightful mess at this stage...

 

 

And now for my most favourite part of any build - removing all those hours worth of masking in the matter of 5 minutes to unveil, hopefully, a good paint job...

 

 

Half way there :

 

 

 

And just for Alain...et voila !!! All that is missing in terms of paint are the orange and blue rudder stripes and the black anti-glare panel on the nose :

 

 

 

[Mistral]

I missed these two photos - here she is with her friend, the IIICZ :

 

 

 

And whilst drying of the first paint coat in the lovely African sun with the cat guarding it from Hadeda poop .... Samsung cell phone camera really battling with colour saturation 

 

 

 

[Mistral]

I'm really happy with the colours - they look (to me) to be spot on. Mixes for those of you interested are :

a) Underside blue - ModelMaster Russian Topside Blue - nice match out of the bottle

b) Buff - Tamiya enamels - mix 10 parts XF-59 Desert Yellow + 5 parts X-6 Orange + 3 parts X-2 white. White content can be varied if you want it lighter or darker for scale effect.

c) Green - Tamiya XF-11 Japanese Navy green - again, a great match out of the bottle.

[red Dog]

Looking really great

[Madmax]

Wonderful progress Malcolm - the hard edge camouflage looks fantastic!  

[alain11]

hi 

great paint job , flawless ! , perfect ! From my seat , the green color "seems " ( I said "seems" ) a bit too dark , maybe an illusion ... in any case , I feel jealous  ..... go on , it's a pleasant thread 

Alain

[Mistral]

19 hours ago, alain11 said:

hi 

great paint job , flawless ! , perfect ! From my seat , the green color "seems " ( I said "seems" ) a bit too dark , maybe an illusion ... in any case , I feel jealous  ..... go on , it's a pleasant thread 

Alain

Thanks Alain.

 

Thank goodness the Japanese WWII paint standards committee in 1939 decided that their paint would be useful 30 years after the war for SAAF colour schemes and that Tamiya faithfully replicated this as XF-11 .

 

Seriously though, I've done so much looking at pictures of SAAF Mirages and this is the best colour match I can come up with. It does vary a lot depending on artificial light vs. shade vs. direct light. And the cell phone camera is not the best. Here are two additional photos taken with two Canon cameras (G9X and 50D) in shade - colours uncorrected, but see how they vary depending on camera. Both taken in RAW. I used the blue background as neutral (this is what they do at model shows to provide a nice viewing environment) and you can see from the printed photos that the dark green is almost darker with an olive drab tint. However, look at the colour of the buff - it's almost pink in the one image - so can I rely on the printing quality of these two images ??? As I said, looking at an array of photos and the CZ at the war museum in Johannesburg, these colour mixes I used are good to go. 

 

 

This shows it nicely :

 

 

 

[Mistral]

20 hours ago, Madmax said:

Wonderful progress Malcolm - the hard edge camouflage looks fantastic!  

Thanks Sean. Praise indeed coming from yourself as an artist and fine modeller. I appreciate 

[Mistral]

20 hours ago, red Dog said:

Looking really great

 

Thanks Red Dog 

[Uncarina]

Very nice work!

 

Cheers,  Tom

[Mistral]

Thanks Tom 

 

So, a little more progress. Painted the orange and blue stripes on the rudder :

 

 

 

 

 

How she'll look with JL-100s :

 

 

 

[Out2gtcha]

Looks bloody amazing!

[Renegade]

1 hour ago, Out2gtcha said:

Looks bloody amazing!

I second that!

[Piprm]

Good Job - That looks pretty Darn Good to me - I've put in my order for one!

Pip