THE
KIT:
When
I saw Eduard come out with this kit not too long ago I knew I had to have it.
Frankly there really isn’t another two-seater Mirage 2000 out there for us
modelers; unless of course you can find the old Heller boxing. That said,
what you get in this kit is actually the old Heller kit with a whole bunch of
bells and whistles all packaged up in a nice new box. So, you still have
to deal with all the old Heller kit problems. But now you get color photo
etched parts for the cockpit, beautiful resin ejection seats, Eduard’s
canopy/wheel masks, a really nice set of decals to depict one of 4 Mirage
2000’s… (two D variants and two N variants) and a great instruction booklet
with a nice colorful 4 page painting and decal guide. So overall a really
nice package with a very attractive price for what you get. The Eduard website
has a really great photo breakdown of the kit and the contents: www.eduard.cz
If
you are going to pick up this kit, open it to check the contents. The
first ‘issue’ of this kit was in gray plastic and many of the large
plastic pieces were very badly warped. The second ‘issue’ was in
light blue plastic with significantly less ‘warpage’. So I would
highly recommend the second ‘issue’ edition if you can find it.
That said the kit still needs a lot of work and certainly does NOT fall
together.
There
are many incorrect panel lines on the kit so depending on how much a stickler
you are for such accuracy, do your research. I addressed the main ones but
left others. Unless you actually worked on these jets, you will never know
the difference ;-) The panel lines are also very shallow in some areas and
cavernous in others so some care needs to be taken to keep the look consistent.
The
clear plastic pieces were in really rough shape with deep scratches and gouges.
They were just loosely sprawled inside the box. Suffice it to say that it
took hours of sanding to get them to a stage that is worth displaying. I
started with 400 grit sandpaper (from Tamiya) and went all the way up to 50,000
grit. Also, do a lot of dry fitting especially if you are going to close
the canopy and pay very close attention to the centre clear piece over the
navigators control panel as it needs to be thinned significantly to lie flush
with both sides of the assembled fuselage.
Other
large pieces like the wings and fuselage halves were also in rough shape with
many deep scratches so prepare to do a lot of filling and sanding. Now
this would not normally be a problem except the plastic that was used in the
strangest I have ever come across. It’s almost as if it has a fine
plastic film on top of the hard plastic underneath. Sanding sometimes
resulted in this surface film to peel away and it was really difficult to stop
this peeling.
THE
BUILD:
Ok,
the first thing to say is - do not follow the instructions. The build is
extremely easy and straight forward so just use common sense in the build and
lots of dry fitting. For instance I glued the fuselage halves together
first so that I could easily address the warpage, THEN I slid the cockpit tub
into position (from the back) and only installed the PE instrument panels at the
very end of the build. Unfortunately my first run at this kit, following
the step by step instructions, led to unrecoverable damage.
You
will need to put spacers/spreaders between the two fuselage halves behind the
air intakes once the two halves are glued to minimize, in an attempt to
eliminate, the large 2-3mm gap between the fuselage and the wings. You
could use filler here but there is a great amount of detail at the join areas
that would have to be re-scribed after the sanding.
You
will also need to close 3 of the landing gear doors that the instructions call
for being open – if you are going to display the kit with gear down. The
Mirage 2000 does not sit on its landing gear with all doors open. The
large main ones close after the landing gear goes down. I have yet to see
a photo of these main gear doors open. This is a tricky piece of business
as this model was not designed with this in mind. So be prepared for lots
of filler, sanding and re-scribing.
I
also added detail to the landing gear and behind the two ejection seats with
some very fine wire based on photos I had. The kit also does not come with
the hydraulics that open and close the front canopy… so this mechanism needs
to be scratch built.
The
ejection seats, although superbly molded in resin, are missing the ‘glass
breakers’ above the headrests. This is easily addressed by cutting these
off the kit plastic seats and gluing them onto the resin seats.
I
scribed more panel lines onto the weapon stations to give them more ‘life’
and accuracy. The instructions do not call for the mounting of the Magic
missiles that actually come with the kit. Reference photos indicate that
they are carried along with the ASMP nuclear missile. However the decals
for the missiles do not come with the kit. I was fortunate enough to score
the original Heller decals that came with this kit from a fellow ARC’er that
had at least the ‘chevrons’ that appear on the Magic. I used the
yellow, brown and silver bands from Two Bob’s missile markings decal sets.
The
two under wing fuel tanks require a lot of work as the two halves that form the
tanks cannot be aligned properly – requiring a lot of filler, sanding and
re-scribing.
There
is also a little window on the left side air-intake that should not be there,
certainly if you are building a N variant, so this must be closed off, seams
filled and sanded smooth with the rest of the fuselage.
The
pitot tube that comes with the kit is a joke. I cut a sewing needle then
used Kaan Gok’s excellent article here at ARC (in the Tools & Tips
section) to make the ‘bulbous’ front end on it and glued it in place after
sanding… works the charm!
Yet
another major faux-pas in this kit is that the ASMP nuclear missile is missing
its major vertical fin. So this must be added for accuracy.
Final
piece of advice is not to use the painting instructions verbatim… they are
clearly wrong for many sections in this kit. Including the fact that the
gray to be used in the camo is supposed to be a mix of a gray color and
orange… well boys and girl the last time I checked mixing these two colors
makes BROWN! So clearly this is wrong; although it would work for the
yellow/brown camo scheme of one of the other Mirage 2000 variants.
However, the gray that is called for is still an excellent match and should be
used. Also, the inside of the wheel wells should not be aluminum colored
but rather gray as reference photos indicate. These are just a few
examples of painting guide errors. So if you are a stickler for accuracy
get lots of reference pics and check the accuracy of the instructions.
Click on
images below to see larger images
The
painting, decaling and detailing process I followed was:
1)
I airbrushed on the base color(s) (I used Gunze Sangyo Acrylics - Acqueous Hobby
Color)…
·
I put in about 5% Tamiya Acrylic Paint Thinner to each batch of Gunze Acrylics I
airbrush on.
2)
I airbrush on clear gloss (again Gunze Acrylic) - not too heavy because I don't
want to seal too many of the panel lines with too much paint;
3)
I use Citadel acrylics and mix my own panel wash (approx 80% water 18% black
Citadel paint and 2% dishwashing detergent - I kinda eye this bit and add more
paint if the panel lines are not coming up as vividly as I like)…
·
I don't apply the wash too liberally in fact I try to get it in the panel lines
as much as possible... let dry for 2-10 minutes then I rub of excess with paper
towel (Citadel paints dry very quickly)... apply a bit of moisture to stubborn
spots on the paper towel... you may need to re-apply wash if you rub it out of
panel lines. The clear gloss coat ensures that the excess panel wash comes off
quite nicely;
4)
Apply another thin coat of clear gloss to seal panel lines in preparation for
decaling;
5)
Apply decals with Micro Set and Micro Sol;
6)
Apply another coat of clear gloss to even out the decals with the body work;
7)
Apply matt coat (Gunze acrylics again)... actually I applied 3-4 coats. But I
let the model dry at least 24-48 hours between any coats… again I was going
for the painted on look of the decals. In between coats I used Tamiya’s
Weathering Master and pastel chalk to weather the aircraft based on reference
photos.
I
just want to thank the
ARC community for
being so very helpful and patient in answering my multitude of questions.
Without all your help, guidance, and tutorial/reference materials on this
site I would
not have been able to build this kit to a level that it deserves. Thanks
everyone =)
Greg
PS:
for all my photos on the build, including early stages of the build go to:
http://s98.photobucket.com/albums/l249/lgl007/Eduard%20Mirage%202000N/?start=0
Click on
images below to see larger images
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