1/48 Italeri Mirage F-1 "Talos"

by Eugene Trapezontas

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The Mirage F-1 has well served the Hellenic airforce for more than 25 years. Many people, as well as me, consider it to be one of the most beautiful aircraft ever built. In the event of the type's decommissioning a few years ago, two examples were painted in a quite interesting anniversary scheme. I decided to built the one depicting the figure of "Talos", a mythological giant made of bronze!! 

The kit used was the well known Italeri (ex Esci), the only one available in 1/48. Except of some Eduard red RBF ribbons & canopy rear view mirrors, no other aftermarket products were used. All improvements resulted from scratchbuilding.

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The cockpit tub, side consoles, instrument panel & coaming, hud, oxygen bottle, were all built from styrene, copper wire etc. The kit's ejection seat was used as a base to built a more accurate replica of the real thing though was heavily modified. 

The next area to be modified were the airbrakes, by drilling all the flap holes & building their wells & actuator rods. The kit depiction of the two Defa underbelly cannons was very poor so these were cut away, new recess sculpted from milliput, & barrels from hypo needles & aluminum tape. Also the u/c wells were detailed as well as brake & hydraulic lines added on the landing gear legs.

Painting was effected using Humbrol 27002 polished aluminium as it matches the color used on the real thing, pretty well. The intake / fuselage flash was masked & painted red. The tailfin was painted in white / blue / red & then the model received several coats of future floor polish in order to proceed with the decals. The decals are a mix of kit ones, spare roundels & the figure of "Talos" was scanned from a magazine photo, retouched with the help of Adobe Photoshop & printed on a HP inkjet printer on white decal film. No weathering was applied on the external surfaces of the model because the actual aircraft received the anniversary scheme just before it was decommissioned and on photos appeared exceptionally clean. The cockpit & landing gear on the other hand were sufficiently weathered.

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Some final details like canopy rearview mirrors, navigation lights, pitot tube from hypo needle & RBF ribbons. Finally the model was placed on a diorama base made of MDF & a piece of vinyl floor tile(!) which is an ideal surface for scribing concrete expansion joints.

*Great job with the templates, made my first post to ARC a piece of cake! I would like to thank you for all that info & reference you provide in this great site.

Eugene

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Photos and text © by Eugene Trapezontas