1/48 Heller Mirage III C 

by Bob Aikens

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Many veteran modelers will remember this interesting (!?) Heller kit from the late 70's- indeed it is still available in the Squadron catalogue. At the time I made my first attempt at it, the kit was the only Mirage of any type available in 1/48 scale(1/50? oops, Fujimi recce!). I'd had this kit around for some time-even tried to sell it; but no takers-most modelers are pretty savvy nowadays! The plastic is that bluish-colored, almost weightless type that you see sometimes-and my second example was badly warped both in the wings and fuselage, but I remained determined to get a better job than my first. This proved to be an elusive goal even after the 24 years between builds!

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Even with the use of the Eduard Detail Set (from 1994) and the re-scribing that I did the, model really didn't look all that much better than my earlier try. Those who have the kit will recall that there are two front sections-for the C and 2-seat B ; this joint was troublesome and coupled with the warpage problems, a lot of filling and touching up was needed to eliminate the very noticeable 'fault' line.

The Eduard detail helped a bit, but the Instrument panel-cum-shroud was a bit finicky and the seat harnesses and handles gave the rather plain seat a better look. But what`s really required is a resin cockpit and seat. The main decaling comes from an old MicroScale sheet 48-128 International Mirages; most of the stenciling came from the kit sheet. In Jean-Pierre Decock's MIRAGE (Warbirds Illustrated A&A Press, 1985) there is a nice flying shot of '10-LL', EC 3/10 'Vexin' over Djibouti (formerly French Somalia) which was the inspiration for this project. But sometimes things don't turn out the way you imagine. So, new Eduard III C kit, here I come! P.S. I tried to breath a little more life into my Mirage with several Adobe PhotoShop 7 composite images.  Oh yes, and about the airbrakes-cutting them out is a fool's errand. I know because I did it!

Bob

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Photos and text © by Bob Aikens