Mirage 2000D -- Armée de l'Air

The cockpit tub is a little bit to small for the Reedoak French Air Force Pilot figure. So I had to make some space for his feet 🙂 

The figure is awesome. I haven't seen so many details on a 1/48 scale figure before. 

Dry fitted the cockpit tub with figure into the the two fuselage halves.  

Now he has some company! 😉  

I dry fitted the fuselage halves together with some masking tape to see if they fit snuggly into the wing section. Unfortunately that wasn't the case at all and I'll have to reinforce them with some sprue to keep the correct width for the wing section.  

Same for the wings themselves. I placed some sprue under the wings, so they have the correct height to have an even connection between fuselage and the wings. I also reinforced the connection with the lower front section with some styrene. 

I handpainted the cockpit's control panels. Slightly drybrushed and holographic tape as operating screens. Glass surfaces (gauges) are replicated with Tamiya X-22. Next steps: seats and crew.  

Both figures are painted and given a wash with oil colours. 

The WSO has a map of 3x2mm map of Brittany on his right leg. This is a DIY-decal I printed. On his left leg he has some notes I „wrote“ with a whiskers sponsored by the cat! ? 

Pilot and WSO in their new home 

Do you see the Mirage? It’s a patch on the figures arm I only noticed with magnifying glasses on and after about 5hrs of painting. The details of the figures are stunning!  

In order to get the wing root flush with the wings, I‘ve spread the fuselage halves with some sprues. The halves tend to bow inwards, what I prevent with the sprues. The front one is 40,5mm and the stern one is 38,1mm.  

This part doesn’t fit at all. It should be flush with the rest of the fuselage. I sanded it down and will rescribe the details.  

Although the sprues make the wing-fuselage-fit better, there are still „trenches“ between the parts. I filled the gaps with Mr. Surfacer 500.  

One side sanded flush.  

Both sides done! Much better!!! But I have to rescribe some panel lines and rivets now.  

I rescribed every single rivet on the upper surfaces. After all the sanding, a lot of them were gone.  

In order to fit the Aires exhaust later, rough sanding was necessary.  

Inside painted and glued together 

4 hours of masking later!  

Primed and painted on the inside. 

The kit‘s HUDs is unusable, so I made some from a yoghurt container lit. 

Finally some colour on the model. Mr. Surfacer 1500 black as primer  

This grey was a little bit too light for me, so I changed it to XF-66 Light Grey 

THis was the first time for me working with AK Camouflage Elastic Putty. Tbh I'm not a fan. it shrinks after a short while and isn't sticky enough for my purposes. I'll stick with Blu Tack! But the AK stuff is great as an elastic filler.  

This was the first result. I wasn't happy with it.  

I repainted the camouflage with Blu Tack as mask. Better! 

Radome painted. 

Gloss clear on 

I painted some details. 

Decals are about 60% on now. Quality is good!!!  

Pinwash done and Semi Flat Clear painted  

Done! 🙂 More pics coming soon...