One often hears and reads about how "bad" older kits were. And by "older" people refer to any mouldings prior 2000, it would seem. Many modern modellers seem to want to shy away from these kits, because they are "difficult", "ill-fitting" or "unbuildable". And, while it is fair to say that older kits were not as finely moulded, came with vague instructions, had parts that were difficult to get together as one would like them to and were not always accurate to the finest detail, there's still a lot to be said for tackling these kits.
I won't get into the whole assembler vs modeller debate here; another time perhaps. Suffice to say that modellers vary greatly when it comes to skills. There are some modellers out there who are so skilful they make the rest of us despair of ever getting to be that good, but the bulk of us have fair to middling skills and we are constantly learning new tricks and skills. And one does not learn much by building kits that go together like a charm and offer us no challenges. I have learned most from those builds that had me groaning at times, swearing at others and that required that I push my skills to the next level.
OK, so with all that in mind, when it came to finding a Mirage F1 C in 48th scale to build I discovered that there were a few modern kits around, but none with South African Air Force markings. I could have gone for any of those and bought aftermarket decals from MAV in South Africa, and for quite a while that was the route I was contemplating, but then I stumbled upon this kit on eBay and I was sold!
Re-issued by Scale Craft, it was a 1978 Esci moulding and came with SAAF decals, and all for around $20 AUD! No-brainer! I ordered the kit on the spot.
The kit arrived a few weeks later. The box looked its age, as you can see from the header image above, but the contents was fine. Three sprues of parts moulded in hard silvery plastic, reminiscent of the Heller kits of the 60s, and a small sprue with clear parts. The instructions were clear, uncomplicated and logical. The decal sheet looked a bit yellowed with age, but well in register and with the colours still clear and crisp.
What greeted me when I opened the box...
A closer look...
One of the sprues....
The front page of the instructions
Of course, as those of us old enough to have been building models in the 1960s knew only too well, there was a lot of flash to be expected, and probably sink marks and ejector pin marks and seam lines, but apart from two tiny sink marks on the upper wing surfaces and a few ejector pin marks in places where they were never likely to be seen, the only major flaw with this kit was flash, as you can see in the image below.
Flash! The main landing gear on the left as it came off the sprue, and on the right after the flash had been removed. The process took less than five minutes, so hardly a problem.
When I started assembling the kit it was like leaping back to the gloriously fun days of my childhood. The kit parts fitted well and the plastic was a joy to handle. Of course there are fewer parts, and sometimes everything comes moulded together, without the need to glue together multiply tiny parts, but even so it was FUN!
The cockpit is basic, as they were in 70s kits, but the decals gave it enough detail for my purposes. The only part I used which did not come out of the box was the ejection seat, which was just not good enough. Luckily I had a spare resin Martin-Baker Mk 10 seat in my spares box. It only needed to have the base sanded down for the seat to fit into the cockpit. I should not have been so lazy and instead added home-made details to bring the kit seat up to scratch, but hey, we all get lazy sometimes!
The only other modification was in respect of the exhaust. The kit had an exhaust nozzle which was only about 5mm deep and ended in a blank surface. I removed the rear of the nozzle and added a piece of clear plastic tubing, painted black inside and grey on the outside, so that a rear view of the completed model would give one the sense that one is looking into the engine, not at a blank surface.
The rest of the build was straightforward. The fuselage halves fitted well. A minimal amount of filler was needed, and even that could have been avoided, had I used some styrene tabs to ensure that the two halves mated flush between locating pins....
I really like the very fine engraved panel lines on this kit. The surface detail is as good as any on modern kits, and actually better than some!
When it came to decalling, I remembered that I DID have MAV decals I had bought for a future F1 AZ build, which was just as well! The kit decals were good as is, except that they were very thin and fragile, something a coat of gloss clear over the whole decal sheet would have helped overcome. The castle insignia tended to split into pieces, so I replaced them with MAV castles. The worst of all were the two flag decals for the tail fin. They just would NOT go down, not even when liberally dosed with Mr Mark Softer decal solution. Instead they curled up at the edges, so I decided to do without them. I have seen reference photos of F1 CZs with no national flag tail markings, so it was not the end of the world. Th rest of the decals and stencil markings were workable.
Next followed a liberal application of Flory Models' Dark Dirt clay wash to bring out the details and the panel lines...
And here's the final product....
Not too shabby, eh? I'm happy with the result, and I thoroughly enjoyed this build. Purists (we call them rivet counters in modelling circles) will notice a few inaccuracies here and there, like the fact that the main landing gear doors are open upwards, not downwards, but I do not build models to satisfy rivet counters, nor do I build museum quality replicas; I build models for the enjoyment of the process, for the pleasure of seeing a box full of plastic parts turned into an aircraft (or tank, or whatever). I build for my edification!
So, if you are a keen modeller and have the opportunity to tackle an older kit, go for it! It will challenge you at times, it will lead you to use all your skills and to learn new ones, but it will also give you a huge amount of enjoyment and satisfaction. No, it is not a Bandai kit that just snaps together with no effort whatsoever, but if you like a challenge and like pushing your skills, by all means search the internet for some old kits, preferably ones from the 70s and even earlier, and HAVE FUN!
Now to find that Airfix 72nd scale DH Beaver kit I built back in 1965.....!
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