Mirage 2000N Dreammodel

This kit features some Photo Etch and I don't have much experience with these parts. But I can't deny the results. This has to be one of my best ejection seats yet. I still need to improve the way you glue these pieces. 

The inside off the engie is painted bij hand. Some dry brushing and washed to get the dirt effects. 

I desided to add some detail to cockpit and landing gear. I used stretched sprue and styrene sheet for this. 

I painted the cockpit US NAVY grey and gave every thing a drybrush with light grey. The decals in this kit are amazing. I very happy with the result.  

The fit of the cockpit is great. The bulkhead part between the cockpits is 3d printed resin and the fit of this part is great. I realised that this part probably has glass inside it but I didn't add that. 

The fit of the fuselage is not the best but also not to bad. But some sanding is needed especially on the underside. I also painted the inside of the air intakes. The canopy design is really strange.
Only the rear cocpit has a seperate canopy and some panellines are infortunately missing. The thetail on the onther parts is amazing so this is a bit disappointing. 

I added the seats and the final result looks great. 

The fit of the wings and air intakes isn't great and some filler is needed. But the fit on the vertical stabilizer tip and cockpit is great. I don't know if any nose weight was needed. Better be safe then sorry. 

I saw some photo's of heavily chipped droptanks on these mirages. I want to replicate these. I used liquid mask as chipping medium. I also finished some parts of the landing gear. 

I primed the plane black and added white preshading. I also decided to try some sand shading on the underside to try something new. 

The sand colour preshade did give a warmer tone to the sky grey underside. I also detail painted the jet nossle and finished the main landing gear leg. 

I'm very happy with the paint finish. I hope the shading will remain even after the weathering. 

The decals in the kit are amazing but also really hard to use. They are strong and very thin. You really need to be carefull to not fold them during appication. But they don't need much decal solution at all. 

The ordinance in this kit doens't look the best but they are usable. I painted all the missles but I won't use the MICA missles. All stencil detail are spare decals. This kit doesn't have decals for the weapons.
The chipping effects on the drop tanks worked out great. I gave the tanks a green brown wash and a matt finish. 

I also gave the upper and underside a green brown wash. I maybe thined it a bit to much but some more waethering layers will probably fix this. 

I used some more washes like black and dark brown to get some more contrast.  

I also added some more washes to the upperside and added chipping and smoke streaks. I also added a blue heating effect to the exhaust part. 

The plane is finished. The fit of the landing gear and weapons is good. I added the jet nossle as the final part. 

Final Photo's, I hope this build log was helpful!