1/48 Hobby Boss Mirage III C

Gallery Article by Burt Gustafson on Oct 12 2011

 

For your viewing pleasure, here are some photos of my 1/48 scale Hobby Boss Mirage III C. The Mirage III was a supersonic jet fighter aircraft designed by the French Company Dassault Aviation during the late 1950s. The Mirage III was a very successful jet fighter, and was sold to many air forces around the world. Some of the world's smaller air forces still fly Mirage IIIs or variants as front-line equipment today.

Construction
This was an out of box build and went together quite well except for the rear canopy. The rear canopy was not wide enough to fit on the canopy rails. I tried to widen it with hot water treatments, but to no avail. As it turned out the rear canopy split into two pieces. So, I glued the two pieces together with CA glue and made the canopy piece wide enough to fit on the rails. I figured the canopy would fog up badly and would have to be scrapped. But, to my surprise the joined pieces didn’t fog up. Lots of fine sanding and applications of Future wax made for a nice clear rear canopy piece that fit perfectly. There is a very fine seam line that runs down the center of the piece, but you have to look very close to see it. Under wing things include two 500 liter fuel tanks and a pair of AIM-9 air-to-air missiles.

 

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Painting
The Hobby Boss Mirage III C kit provided three paint schemes: desert tan camouflage, light blue or bare metal (NMF). As you can see from the photos I went with the NMF finish. I had read several ARC articles about using Alclad’s Micro-Mesh kit to get a really bright polished finish. So, I purchased Alclad’s Micro-Mesh kit and polished the naked plastic of this Mirage III C. I then primed the model with MM Gloss Black and let the paint dry and cure for two days. Right away I could see the difference; I had a very glossy black Mirage III C. I then airbrushed the shinny black model with two light coats of Alclad II Polished Aluminum, and wow what a beautiful very shinny bare metal finish. If you want a bright shinny finish, by all means polish the bare plastic before painting.

Decals
To protect the NMF finish from any interference from a decal setting solution, I hand brushed a coat of Future over the model and let it dry and cure for three days. The Future dulls the finish a bit at first, but after a day or so the bright shine returns. Hobby Boss provided decals for three aircraft. I went with decals for Mirage III C, No. 92 from EC 2/10 “Seine”. The decals for this kit were excellent. They are well printed, easily placed on the model and laid down nicely to the model with the help of some Solvaset decal setting solution. After decaling, I airbrushed a coat of MM Gloss Lacquer Finish for a final finish.

Comments
This kit was a nice build. The parts fit was good except for the rear canopy. Cockpit detail was OK, but the external detail is excellent, the decals were excellent. The overall quality of this kit is very good. I was very pleased with the finished model—especially the NMF finish.

Burt Gustafson

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Photos and text © by Burt Gustafson