MD 450 Ouragan - Israel - 1956

A nice artwork I found of the Israeli MD 450 Ouragan with bort number 44 as seen in action during the Suez War (November 1956) by Jerry Boucher (2007).
The number 44 is also the topic of this project.

As a side note, I am afraid the underwing rocket launch rails seen here might be the wrong ones for that moment in time, since those rails were actually employed only by the Israeli Fouga Magister and together with different rockets.
 

The Israeli MD 450 Ouragans were all in a natural metal finish before the autumn of 1956. The beginning of the Suez War (29 October 1956) caught the Israeli Air Force in the middle of the transition to camouflaged painted aircraft. Also the Ouragans were receiving the known dark blue with brown camouflage scheme, but the process was completed only for a handful of Ouragans as the Suez War commenced.

The faimous hog mouth and eyes were rather an exception with only few of the Israeli Ouragans carrying them. 

There are only two relevant option for the Ouragan in 1:72: the Heller and the Valom kits. I chose the Valom kit in the end, but I couldn't find the boxing with the IDF markings. 

Whoever has seen the kit knows what to expect: a short run with many issue and imperfections. The wheels are so badly shaped that some boxes are including also a resin replacement for them.

Otherwise rivets everywhere. I am not a fan of such details in 1:72, but I won't bother to cover them.
 

The Valom kit includes a nice resin ejection seat which seems to be accurate enough overall, judging by the extremely scarce information available reagrding the real seats.

I managed to find ONLY one picture of the seat (in a pretty bad state) as displayed in a museum. 

In the end there will two such IDF Ouragans, both in work. Here before any weathering. 

After weathering, the seats turned out just nice enough for what is going to be visible through the rather thick canopy.
 

The interior is overall decently detailed, but the issue is with the very thick one piece canopy. It's questionable if anything stay visible inside with the closed canopy. 

And a first general Aluminium layer....after who knows how many primer and correction sanding iterations.
This kit is a short run, therefore no excellent part fit was expected at all. Expectations were indeed met with an overall sub mediocre fit. This was a slightly bigger challenge due to the planed natural metal finish. Particularly annoying is the fit of the canopy to fuselage. 

The canopy leaves a big gap beneath in the middle area, where filling and delicate sanding was necessary. Later removing the canopy for another session of cleaning of the inside (due to unepxected dust/contaminations) will also ruin this work. 

The air intake is generally satisfying in shape. The small specific holes at the flow separator should have been added before this step (I forgot and drilled them at the very end).

One big disadvantage of the one-piece canopy in this project is that particles of dust or whatever else can still get inside the air intake, travel to the cockpit and get stuck to the canopy from the inside.
One BIG tip: cover the intake as soon as you glue the canopy. I didn't do that and had to remove again the canopy and waste another additional week of work.