Italeri F-21 to Mirage

[Graeme H]

OK, here is a very long term project, that I recently resurrected, and it's still a long way from being finished, just thought I would throw it out there
so part 1 tonight

It's the total POS Italeri F-21 alias Kfir C1, issued only once in 1987 according to Scalemates (The C7, i'm sure a different kit, never got one of those, did have 4 of these)

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/134104- ... -f-21-lion
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I think Brad did one of these a while back

Anyway, I decide way back in the early '90's to convert it to a Mirage, this was probably before the early High Planes kit came out, I recently found it again, after 25 years of hiding away.
I don't have any photos of it before this lot
Now if you know about Kfir's they are powered 'by a GE engine, not the Atar of the Mirage, first thing was the back end, which I had started doing way back when, but if you have a few HPM, and Heller Mirages in stock there are a lot of spare available, especially in the HPM kit, so the modern way was to take a spare back end from the HPM kit, which is the long one for Atar 9B, using the shorter back end from the Atar 9C as a guide, I measured it out, and marked roughly where it was to go, then I found a 3/8th or 10mm nut that was about the right height, and spinning the HPM back end around on a flat surface and using a scalpel marked it out where to cut, took 2 attempts to saw it up, not one of my strong suits, the next thing was to put it up to the Kfir fuselage, and amazingly it fitted very well, just a little off here and there, but nothing serious, and mostly all at the bottom.

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You can see a bit of filler there, but look at the big gaps at the front and back of the Italeri kit, a really bad fit, a lot worse than my new back end.
The ventral tank, looked decidedly dodgy, so I took it off, cast a new using Oyumaru, and some builders bog I had spare

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Oyumaru for those uneducated in the use of it, is a moulding material you can use over and over, you merely put it in boiling water and push it over what you want to mould, it's quite inexpensive as well.

You will note from the boxart on the Scalemates site that this kit has ACMI pods on the outer wing rails, beauty I though much better than trying to put together the 2 part HPM ones, until I offered them up to the wing, my goodness I thought those are massively overscale, the Elevon fairings are twice as big as the inboard ones, back to the HPM kit, where there are spares, as in error they did 3 of one size and one of the other in the main sprues, and had to put in a small correction set, so taking the correct ones from 2 different main sprues, (get the idea I have few spares of these), I mounted those on, much better, fitted the HPM Matra 550 rails

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More next installment

[Ansett A330]

Wow I'm pretty sure you started this before I made the terrible career move over to WA in 1990 so that would make it 1989!

What you forgot to tell the folks was that back in the Seventies you were the Guy everyone could thank for the Hasegawa Kfir as you had just about converted a Mirage (Frog kit wasn't it?) to a Kfir and then Hasegawa released it's Kfir! (Pretty much like I'm the Guy that the Military Modellers can thank for the Tamiya Char B1 bis as I had two and a half of these scratchbuilt over 20 something odd years before Tamiya released their kit! Although I must admit one of mine was 1:32 and the second was 1:35.)

[Graeme H]

Part Deux

Rob, you are probably right about when it was started, it would never have come this far if it wasn't for the generous supply of spares in the HPM/PJ kit.

Yes strange back then I wanted a Kfir, but now want to turn the Kfir into a Mirage, odd how that came about

So in todays episode we examine what my next moves were.
I had originally thought of making a Mirage from it, but when I restarted, I thought if I put the Italeri nose on, I could make an Argentinean Finger version, so duly glued that on, and then thought I had better look more closely at that Italeri nose before I go much further, as there are spare noses in the HPM/PJ kit, well, it turned out the Italeri kit nose was way overscale, wouldn't look out of place on a 1/48th kit, should have know that was never going to be on the cards, tried scraping and sanding , but realised I was wasting time, so sawed off the nose, and first found the HPM/PJ nose left form a Dagger version, so on that went.
As I had fitted the small fin fillet of the export versions, I knew it would be harder to do an RAAF one, so went on a decal hunt came up with a Carpena sheet (now Colorado) that had a nice Brazilian one, so thought that would be nice.
Went and painted the upper Bleu de Mirage, but it didn't go so well, so sanded it down, leaving this

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At this stage I started thinking about the cockpit, the Italeri one was a complete work of fiction, just so happens I had a High Planes resin one from the original High Planes Kit, would this fit, well after I cut away the spurious rubbish that was there and the wildly inaccurate coaming, and rear bulkhead it fitted like it was meant to be there, you little beauty, that solved a lot of problems, and was the turning point in continuing with this.

So looking again at the Carpena sheet, I saw one of the other options was an Argentinean one, so changed my mind and decided that was the go, so back into the paint shop, sprayed the tan, using Model Master FS30219, where I thought it would go rather than the whole aircraft, then masked up

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unmasking showed due to very poor quality control in the paint shop, I had not got it right

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more later when I get some spare time

[Graeme H]

Parte 3

Hola viewers, this episode we examine other parts of this conversion.

In the Falklands War, the Mirage III was only used at the beginning, mostly for top cover, one type of load out was a centreline Matra 530, 2 Matra 550 Magics on the outboard pylons and 2 1700 Litre fuel tanks on the inboard wing pylons.
I have no idea if this was an overload situation, but it would be very close.

So fitted the forward windscreen, surprise surprise, the fit was atrocious, so a lot of work getting the oversized fuselage blended in, with the paint taking a beating. Also need to address the crappy edge at the rear of the cockpit.

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Now, sourcing 1700 L tanks is not easy, as the HPM kit doesn't do those, and they are the French style anyway, however there are some resin ones in the PJ Belgian 5BA boxing of the same kit, but I really need those for the Belgian one, so looking around I found I had a couple of Heller Mirage III's left, and they have what could be called those tanks, except they at about 3000 Litre tanks not 1700 ones, so using the Resin ones as a guide I got some Evergreen tube the same size, and decided to manufacture some of my own.

So cutting the ends off the Heller tanks would give me something to fair in at the ends
So using my trusty el cheapo Flyscreen Mitre Box

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Gluing it onto the tube I placed a smaller diameter tube inside the larger tube to gave it some strength

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Did same with the front end, although you can see I cut it too far up, making it quite a lot to sand down, this would give me some grief as I went through the plastic and had to continually fill it with superglue. You can also clearly see the Heller end has a tapered end, but the PJ and real ones have a blunt back end, something I would need to address.

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I had to plank up the tube a bit as it was just a tad smaller

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A bit of filler, and a comparion photo of the Heller one at top, the PJ one next down, then mine, and the tubing for the next one

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A bit more work, and they are starting to look like the PJ one, I have added the pylon and fins to the top one

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The Argies didn't paint any 2 tanks the same, these are basically matched to a photo, paintwork is a bit rough still (very rough actually)

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Now viewers this is where we sit for a while as I can't get much done at the moment, and on another quest, I went off to find some Matra 530, and 550's, the 530 has been done by HPM, as a 3D printed version, unfortunately without the pylon, and they also did the 550's as 3D printed ones, so got some of those, and went searching for 530 pylon info, The big scale go to Mirage man Capt Eric came to the party with a pretty decent drawing of it, but then PJ released a resin one with the pylon, Huzzah, but when it arrived it was resin, and the fins on the 530 were warped badly, so it's going to be the PJ pylon and HPM missile, unless I decide to do some plastic card one for the PJ one.

Stay tuned viewers for Season 2 coming to a forum you love

[Adam the Akrodude]

GO GRAEME!

[hrtpaul]

Loving this Graeme. Bloody fine work PS the 146 turned up safe and sound. Thanks muchly

[Ansett A330]

Now, sourcing 1700 L tanks is not easy, as the HPM kit doesn't do those, and they are the French style anyway, however there are some resin ones in the PJ Belgian 5BA boxing of the same kit, but I really need those for the Belgian one, so looking around I found I had a couple of Heller Mirage III's left, and they have what could be called those tanks, except they at about 3000 Litre tanks not 1700 ones, so using the Resin ones as a guide I got some Evergreen tube the same size, and decided to manufacture some of my own.

Ke? No comprendo!

Por qué no acaba de lanzar un par de ellos utilizando los tanques del PJ como Masters?

(Don't try to reverse translate that as that's not what I wrote!)

[Graeme H]

Now, sourcing 1700 L tanks is not easy, as the HPM kit doesn't do those, and they are the French style anyway, however there are some resin ones in the PJ Belgian 5BA boxing of the same kit, but I really need those for the Belgian one, so looking around I found I had a couple of Heller Mirage III's left, and they have what could be called those tanks, except they at about 3000 Litre tanks not 1700 ones, so using the Resin ones as a guide I got some Evergreen tube the same size, and decided to manufacture some of my own.

Ke? No comprendo!

Por qué no acaba de lanzar un par de ellos utilizando los tanques del PJ como Masters?

(Don't try to reverse translate that as that's not what I wrote!)

I assume looking at that you wanted me to make a copy of the PJ ones, well, this is cheaper, and no need to buy Silicone and resin

[Ansett A330]

Any progress?