1/48 Italeri Mirage 2000C

by Sam Harvey

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Well, after my last few massive novel type articles, I thought I would make this one fairly short and sweet and just leave you with some eye candy!!

Actually, there's not too much to tell. It is the Italeri rendition of the Mirage 2000, and is pretty much OOB, aside from those stunning decals!! I'm not really much of a fan of French aircraft of any era, but after I saw this decal sheet on the TwoBobs website, I fell in love with them. I just HAD to have 'em! This is one of those occasions where you buy that magic set of decals, and then worry about going out and finding a kit to put them on later!!

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As I didn't have a huge interest in the aircraft itself, there wasn't the motivation to do any real detail work, so as mentioned earlier it is essentially OOB. I did however replace the seat, as the kit one was pretty crap. The rest of the kit was built (IIRC) as per instructions. As Italeri kits go, it's one of their better ones, it still needs filler, but is nowhere near as nasty as their sub standard, festering and simply shocking F-22!! (Sheesh, why don't I tell ya how I really feel!!!) The biggest pain in the neck with the kit was that sodding refuelling probe. There were no locating pins of any description to help align it, just a vague "about here" arrow in the instructions. I had to rely on reference pics of the real bird for attachment location and angle. Just keep that in mind if you decide to build one and you should be cookin' with gas!!

Essentially I wanted something to showcase those beautiful TwoBobs decals! I have a stack of them in my collection, and figured it was about time I tried them out. Trust me people, these decals are nothing short of breathtaking. If you have been deciding whether or not to give a set of TwoBobs a go, I thoroughly recommend them! You will not be disappointed! They are lovely and thin, whilst also being exceptionally strong. The tiger head and claw are actually one decal (the striped rips are a separate decal), and looking at the size of them, I actually woosed out and decided to cut them in half and apply the head and leg/claw separately. The decal is actually so strong that you could quite easily apply them without cutting and they wont tear.

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I used my trusty Polly S decal softening solution to make sure all the decals sat down snugly into any panel lines. They reacted beautifully and snuggled down tight. After setting, another coat of floor polish and a flat coat to complete the illusion of painted on markings.

The only real regret I have is that I think that the dark grey doesn't quite seem dark enough when compared to the photo's of the real bird, however, knowing TwoBobs attention to detail and how pedantic they are in getting it just right, maybe it's just the lighting in the photo. In any case, this little jet has won me a few awards at both club and state level modelling competitions.

Congrats to TwoBobs for simply stunning decal sheets. One TwoBobs sheet down 12,007 to go (well, the pile looks that tall anyway ....)

    Happy modelling, and may your paint never harden in the bottle! Enjoy the pix!

Sam

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Photos and text © by Sam Harvey