Dassault Mirage IIIBE in 1/48 scale

Next year will be the 50th anniversary of the Dassault Mirage III entering service with the Armee de l'Air (French Air Force) and I have committed myself to building a number of models of various versions of the ubiquitous French fighter for the French Air Forces SIG display already being planned for Scale Modelworld 2011 (We haven't even had the 2010 show yet).

One of the variants that I have volunteered to build is the Mirage IIIBE two seat trainer using the Heller IIIB as a basis for the conversion, I actually started this a few years ago but it got shelved a some point and had been languishing in a box out of sight for quite a while.

So far the rear fuselage has been assembled, as have the wings, a new nose cone has been fabricated from layers of 40 thou. plasticard, the cockpit and ejector seats have been partly detailed using a spare etched brass fret from the Heller Hi-tech version of the kit. The ventral fuel tank pack and afterburner have been cross kitted from the ESCI kit, however this requires further detailing, a jet pipe has been cobbled together from a spare resin one from the Fonderie Miniatures Mirage F.1B kit and a turbine casting of my own.

Additional work has included separating the flaps/elevons so that they can be remounted in the drooped position characteristic of the Mirage III at rest and rescribing the raised panel lines.

As can be seen from the photograph there is a lot more to be done before the model is finished and I will be recording my progress in future posts.


This work by Roland Turner is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Project Airfix

Those marvelous people at Airfix have come up with an idea to promote the modelling hobby to young people.

Project Airfix

Inspired by  the Airfix episode of James May's Toy Stories on BBC Television when it was demonstrated that when given the opportunity and some encouragement, youngsters can appreciate there are alternatives to the likes of the X-box. Once they had had the chance to build a model the majority of children who took part said that they actually preferred modelling to computer games.

There will no doubt be some cynics who will say that this is just a commercial exercise, but I would like to ask them, what is wrong with that? In the end the success of companies like Airfix is essential to the future of our hobby, the more young people they can attract to pleasures on building models the better. Without the revenue from the sales of existing products there will be no money to invest in new products and our wish lists will remain just that - wishes.

So, if you are involved in any sort of youth organisation, or know someone who is, go to the Project Airfix Page of their website and compete the down loadable form.