Hi everyone!

This is my last entry to this wonderful GB!

The Mistral was a licensed built Vampire, basically utilizing a more powerful Nene engine and ejection seats. It was built by French SNCASE and was probably the best performing and most refined single seat Vamp. It still was not faster then the standard Vamp, due to the airframe's Mach limitations.

The Revell kit is a 1991 rebox of the venerable, very sweet (!) 1979 Heller Vampire.

Here is a look at the sprues, that are Made in Mexico!

As you can see the decal sheet is small but looks comprehensive, hope it will perform well, despite it being 30 years old!

Instructions are nice and clear, in typical Revell style:

Two NMF lovely french schemes are provided, I have to choose one!

All in all, it looks like your usual good old Heller kit. If you treat it like a nowadays limited run kit, you are more or less guaranteed to come up with a good result.

This is intended to be a quick build, with the model sent to a good friend in France as a Christmas present, meaning it has to be finished by the end of October tops!

More to come!

That is a real quick start, Spiros @fiveten
All looks great, so I fully agree on the outcome given by the QC engineers.

Good one Spiros my friend, the Revell boxing is a bit different to my Heller, Airfix parts !

1 attached image. Click to enlarge.

Initial excess plastic shaved and liquefied styrene was applied at all offending gaps. here she is!

Thanks my friend @johnb!
Yep, such shrinkages arise when a quantity of liquefied styrene stagnates at the opposite side for whatever reason. I am patient, not touching anything for a couple of days, then fill and sand.

Now I feel better about my putty work, Spiros (@fiveten), which usually consist of more putty than plastic. The clean-up prior to a NMF should be fun. It is great to see your kids involved in the modeling. :o)

Thank you so much my good friends @gblair and @johnb!

Well, you can see the plastic between the putty, can't you? 🙂

Yep, it's true that a number of Heller kits have to be treated like limited run kits: this one does not even have locating pins and the fit leaves at places something to be desired. Don't get me wrong: I love this kit and really do not mind tackling its discrepancies, it's a cutie of a kit, yet a temperamental one!

My kids spend quite some time with me in the now "our" mancave: I let them sort of play with some (mainly old Matchbox) completed models that I made during the 80s. The good thing with Matchboxes is that the completed kits are usually sturdy/un-flimsy, so they can tolerate some gentle (or not that gentle) play 🙂

P.S. As you can imagine, the kids have to assign a sort of ownership to each model (like: whose will this model be?), so, the Mistral, since it is entered in our friend's @airbum DH100GB, is Mr. Erik's plane!

Improvements after sanding are clearly visible, Spiros @fiveten
I'm surprised about how long this shrinking lasts.