1/48 ESCI Mirage 2000C 

by Dan McWilliams

--------------------

 

This was a commission build for a colleague.  He flew Mirage 2000s while on exchange with l'Armée de l'Air Francaise in Cambrai around the time this aircraft was flying.  When telling me he wanted a Mirage built, he pointed to a photo on the wall of his office and said he'd flown this one, and could I build it in a flying pose?  Wonderful.  The two big challenges I had were finding decals and a means to put it in-flight.  The decals were relatively easy, given that ARC's pages quickly yielded Syhart Decals in France as a place to go.  Sylvain has done an incredible job on his decals (see details later).  The in-flight stand caused many sleepless moments.  I talked with a friend who is into plastic working, but couldn't find a good attachment point on this aircraft (because my buddy wanted it with an external fuel tank on the centreline).  Then I found a stand I had for a desk-top calendar, which neatly fit the tailpipe
of the jet.  I put some double-sided tape on the stand so that it wouldn't slip too much, and carefully installed the aircraft with a near-vertical attitude.

Click on images below to see larger images

  

Photo 4

  

Photo 5

  

Photo 6

I found the painting and decaling to be challenging.  I used Gunze paints for the first time, and loved the easy clean-up and reduced fumes (I used to always use Humbrol enamels).  I found that the white, however, didn't cover very well, and ran a lot.  Impatience on my part (not waiting for it to dry before respraying) caused some running under the nose, but I was able to mop it up with rubbing alcohol and recover.  I also experimented with using sticky paper for masking.  Disaster struck as I removed the sticky paper - it stuck too much, and peeled off some spots of yellow paint (see 04.jpg).  Worse, I had already mixed in some brown to make the darker yellow colour, and didn't have any more basic yellow to fix the problem.  I then used some Humbrol yellow enamel with a brush to cover up some of the holes, roughly following the pattern of the eventual stripes (see 05.jpg).  Before decaling, the model looked terrible (06.jpg as well).

Just like every great novel, things got better as the decals went on (sequence 07, 08, 09 show clearly the progression).  Thanks Syhart!!!  When applying decals, I didn't put any extra coating on top of the sheets as he suggested in his instructions.  Testing with a couple small under-belly decals gave me confidence that I could get away without coating them.  Lots of cutting with a very sharp blade was required; the decals came printed all
together, and had to be individually trimmed and applied.  It took me a couple days to get it done, but the motivation kept increasing as the jet looked better and better.  Now, I look at pictures of the real thing
(13.jpg) and see my model. 
I was very daunted by the challenge of doing such a complex colour scheme.  Thanks to the quality of the decals, I was able to pull it off and come up with something that made my buddy smile from ear to ear when I gave it to
him.
Dan

Click on images below to see larger images

Photo 7

  

Photo 8

  

Photo 9

  

  

  

Photo 13

Photos and text © by Dan McWilliams