Heller 1/72 Dassault Mirage III-R
With 3 other models in various stages of building I've just finished this re-edition of this old Heller kit of the Mirage III-R in 1/72.
I's a basic kit, keeping in mind the tooling is over 40 years old, but the lines of the Mirage III are well presented.
I have build it almost OOB and only added a full resin cockpit set from Pavla, as the Heller cockpit is quite empry to say the least.
It takes a lot of patience to paint all the details. The HUD is made using a tiny scrap of Bare Metal foil chrome and add a drop of clear green and blue. The angled projecting glass is not present in the kit and I made this from a little square piece of acetate. The radar screen is made using the same method.
Underside of the fuselage is painted with Tamiya sky grey. The upper fuselage is revell Aquacolor greyish blue with Lifecolor dark green. These colors came as close to the original colors used by the French airforce in the early 1980's.
The canopy is normaly not fitted to open posing, but to show the nice cockpit details I used a tiny strip of tinfoil from a winebottle to act as a hinge, and it works fine to keep the canopy in place. Great fun building such a old school kit, and I've bought some more older Heller kits on the last model show in Holland. So they will pop up here on iModeler in due time. Thanks for looking and your comments, ideas etc. are allways appreciated.
The Mirage looks fantastic, as do all of your builds my friend. Happy New Year.
Thanks Louis.
That is a beauty! I'd almost forgotten that one. One of the better Mirages, for the time. I may even have one. I know I have the 48th, which I bought 'cause it had a two seater option. I even had the 72nd IV Nuclear Bomber, Force de Frappe.
Thanks Bernard. Yeah the IV Nuclear Bomber is another one I like to build. Impressive delta wing aircraft.
Nicely done, Ferry...especially in the "small-ish" scale - 🙂
Thanks Craig, I still love the 1/72 challenges.
My favourit Mirage III, well done 🙂
Eric
Thanks Eric.
Very nicely done! I've also got a Heller Mirage - but don't think it's the -R version. It will probably end up as one of my S. American subjects - possibly a Peruvian. I just opened my Heller Javelin kit and was incredibly disappointed to find that the canopy was malformed and incomplete, and so the kit unbuildable as is! I've been looking on ebay for a replacement kit, but am hesitating due to the size of my stash already... 🙂 I hope your other Heller kits are all complete!
Thanks Greg. This kit offers 3 versions, Spanish E, French R or Belgian 5BA. S-American versions something to for me to keep in mind. Now you mention the missing part, I have a Heller 1/72 Mirage 2000-B missing it's central external fuel tank, box was factory sealed. All the others are ok.
A sweet build!
Thanks Robert.
Beautiful, Ferry! The Mirage III is such a pretty jet, as are many other delta winged craft.
Well done!
Very nice build.
Looks good Ferry, nicely done.
Really nice old Heller, and quite a work to do, as i remember it, it had some really nasty sinkages on the wings.
I still have it in my stash, so this comes as an inspiration to build it finally.