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802 is lying in Davey Jones' Locker. My erstwhile squadron mate, Mark Edwards ejected from her during an ACM exercise off the West Coast near Langebaan. He was flying with Bob Crinall and hit his slipstream, got into a spin and had to abandon the plummeting delta. There was a typical cold ocean fog blanketing the Atlantic that day, which made the subsequent search and rescue an act of sheer chopper tenacity. They air-taxied in the fog until they found a rather blue jet-jock in his dinghy.

The link between my username and Mark's Mirage is pure coincidence.

When the Italeri 1:32 Mirage III C was announced, I was thrilled. I pored over the promotional CAD drawings and dreamed about the finish. I had seen a photo of 802 in her MADMAX colours some years ago and it was an obvious choice. I had no idea however what lay in store for me in that big box of plastic.

Here is a picture of 802 in her final coat of paint. It is a photo of a photo which Dudley Trollip sent me, and I am afraid I have no idea who originally took it. Thank heavens however, that he did.

Wow, don't remember seeing that photo before.

Looking forward to this build.

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How come every time my ship comes in, I'm at the airport?

Thanks Dean.

At the outset I would like to mention that this model is already virtually complete. I wasn't brave enough to do a "live" build, since too many stillborn attempts at the same kit now litter the internet. I didn't want to end up at some unsalvageable juncture where I lob the whole lot into the bin. It has been close at times.

The first thing I tackled was the ejection seat. Since the seat is the direct link between pilot and aircraft, it is a major part of the tactile experience of flying the thing. Even though I haven't strapped on an ejection seat for years, I can remember the sensation, the sequence and even the discomfort as if it were yesterday. Significantly in this case, it saved Mark's life.

The kit offering doesn't quite look like the distinctive Martin Baker Mk4. The detail is mostly undersize (except for the rivets!), the parachute horseshoe pack looks odd and the straps are mostly too thin. Strangely though, and this becomes a thread when building the kit, it is quite useful as a foundation. Here are the kit parts.



I decided to build it up from the frame, and improve the components bit by bit. Some of you may have seen my initial attempt at the War Museum a few months ago, and fortunately Nick Scheltema was one who did. He warned me that if built to scale it probably wouldn't fit into the cockpit. He was right. Here the first frame.



And here is a somewhat more compact frame, with upscaled drogue gun and barometric unit. Quite distinctive features. The metal sleeve above the drogue gun is where the top latch hand wheel is screwed in - for seat maintenance. I also increased the size of the upper portion of the catapult which is visible when installed in the cockpit.



From the side you can see the seat adjusting handle and the support for the horseshoe pack.



Here is my first attempt at remodelling the horseshoe pack. The Squadron putty is probably still wet, and that was done in June! I then elected to make it entirely from styrene, and carve it to shape.





These are the components of the seat, the harness cushion is made of aluminium sheet which holds its shape very well. Notice the detail on the kit frames, a wee bit tiny.









Wine bottle foil was cut into strips for the straps, and buckles stolen from the Aires detail set for my 1:32 Me109 - the only other 1:32 kit in my stash. Some of the Italeri PE had to be put to use here.

Julle vlamgatte!!! Time to build proper planes WWII era, that is the real stuff.


Just kidding, I have a 1/32 Trumpeter Mig 21F Fishbed in my stash that I am to scared to tackle. Has all PE and white aluminium parts included. Will get to it after my Mozzie phase has passed.

Great start , will follow this thread.

Awesome stuff Sean . Can never have too many Mirages. Look forward to seeing more.

Drifter, the Trumpy MiG-21 is a nice kit. The only part that doesn't fit is the forward avionics hatch. Leave it open.

Always helps if you actually flew these in building thm in detail
The Trump Mig 21 F13 is a really cool kit, I also have one for next year to build

T

Hello Gents, Kind of you to pop in so soon and voice your support. Jets are actually very cool, and Mig 21's in particular. Mirages needed something to shoot down!

Painting an ejection seat is a real labour of love. So many details and very specific colours. Martin Baker seats have very distinctive belt colours to boot - as I recall: blue straps connect to the seat, and tan to the parachute. Sea-survival and land-survival seat packs were different colours and in this case there were two different face screen handles - two loops or only one. It looks like two handles in the only photos I have of 802. Talking of which, those infernal stripes... I elected to mask them with thinly sliced Tamiya tape at this scale and it worked out quite well. 1:48 is a whole different ballgame.







At about this stage I got sidetracked with the cockpit and the wheel wells, and forgot to document how the seat got completed. It did however and in the interest of continuity I will include a picture of how it turned out.

That seat is a piece of art in itself.

_________________
How come every time my ship comes in, I'm at the airport?

Looking awesome Madmax.

Hi Madmax
The seat is a master piece
My kit is awaiting motivation to start it.
Regards, Vernon

Great work Sean,

Know that feeling of strapping in and then realising you should have actually stopped by at the jazz on the way out

Great modelling, looking forward to the rest of the build.

Regards,
Piet v S.

Greetings Vernon and Piet!

I must say the seat was a lot of fun to modify, and made for relatively quick gratification. Now for the somewhat more challenging task of growing a fighter around it. Makes sense to give it a cockpit first.

The engineers at Italeri didn't seem to have access to an actual Mirage IIIC as a basis for this kit. Well, not a cockpit or undercarriage in any case. It clearly has the IIIE's cockpit based on the instrument panel and the joystick. I don't know what they did with the "dashboard"? Once again however, it is a sound base to work from...







Photographs of the IIICZ's cockpit are rare. This is a photo of 800's cockpit that "Photon" took at Lanseria back in 2009 (I first saw the photo on the Large Scale Planes website where an Australian "ericg" was building this kit into Rynier Keet's 811). A very useful reference, and the only one I had initially. I subsequently managed to take photo's through the canopy of 805 as I couldn't get hold of a canopy tool or ladder, and eventually Malcolm and friends were granted access to the cockpit of 813 in Saxonwold. I'm sure some photo's will emerge from that in his next build.



As you can see, a lot of work is required to get the cockpit to resemble a SAAF machine. I decided to scratch build the dash as I couldn't get the kit part to look like the structure of the real thing. Once again however Nick's warning of scale came into play, and it would appear that I made it a little too large. Still better than the kit's bobbled attempt. The gun sight in the actual aircraft protrudes some way out of the instrument panel, and I had to rebuild most of it. The instrument panel is beyond salvation for me, so I built one up from styrene and brass bezels from airscale. I cut the radar screen from the original IP and placed it in the centre console below the weapons panel.

When test fitting the new dash I discovered that it fits a little too snugly. That scale thing. I did some work on the side panels and cut the existing stick back to the bend, then fitted it to a styrene contraption that resembles the C's rather antiquated control column. The back portion of the cockpit is pretty accurate, and only requires some tweaking to look the part.

With all the components ready, it was a quick airbrushing in a grey/black and then out with a very fine paintbrush and the enamels for the detail work. I used some decals to help with the yellow/black stripes which I nicked from the pylon decals. The stripes on the stick had me in fits however, and the yellow around the fuel instruments was nigh impossible. The IP is smaller than it looks in these photo's!




I decided to use clear epoxy to fill the various openings and thus simulate the glass in the gunsight, radar screen and instruments. The last was a mistake. Through a talent failure, I put too much epoxy into the lower instruments and created a mess that resembles some photoshop technique to blur things. Expletives!





So, version two of the instrument panel was produced, and at least the instruments ended up better, but due to some other details it is probably not much better than the first. You will notice the airscale decals for the instruments, and the "Bezu" which is slightly rounded to resemble this wonderful actually globed instrument. I decided to call it quits on the cockpit at this point, and focus on the wheel wells. Instrument panels - oh the heartache!