Beany's Kfir - Italeri 1/48 boxing

[beany]

I've always been a fan of the Mirage III and her derivatives, so the only question for this GB was whcih one to build - here is what I currently have to choose from:


The Revell/Ceji is the smallest I have in 1/100th scale - a very nice little kit.


The Academy is very basic, and has been started so not a contender as it turns out. Much additional detailing and scratch-building are required to turn this sows ear into any kind of purse.


The best thing I like about these type of Italeri kits is the large range of decals options they come with. It often leaves me wanting to buy more of the same kit to do one or more of the other options - so a good marketing ploy by Italeri I suppose!



The Hobby Boss kit is a bit on the basic side again. some of these kits may well be the same moulds, just in different boxings for all I know - I'm never very up to speed on that kind of thing, but would be keen to find out if anybody knows.


...and the winner is, the Kfir. I believe this is actually the ESCI kit, but am not sure. I really like the Israeli colour scheme so this one wins hands down. I also have a fold out poster from one of those nice art books that go for a song in some large stationery chains.







I decided that my build configuration wil be wheels down, with the canopy up and a pilot in-situ. The pilot is from the spares box - Airfix or Italeri I think but can't remember exactly. Unfortunately he does not fit in the seat so some drastic surgery is required to both the tub and the seat.


The pilot is only in primer coats effectively in order to show seams that need to be filled down - that webbing on his hands and fingers looks particularly nasty.


The front of the seat needs to be completely removed in order for the pilot to actually sit on the tub floor to fit below the ejector handle at the top of the seat.


The front top of the seat is totally fictitious from what I can tell, but I don't want to spend money on a resin replacement only to have 90% of it obscured by the pilot figure, so I have filed down the "overhang" of the seat, but then needed to re-drill the placement holes for the ejector pull handle - itself very incorrect for this seat, which I believe in the Kfir is a Martin Baker Mk.6


Cheers
Al.

[Chris]

That does appear to be an ESCI kit, its slightly different from the one I just made, but it does represent a different type (Mine was a Mirage IIIEA vs the Kfir series, 'Kfir' btw means young lion).

[Saxon]

Nice kit, looking forward to seeing it progress. Is that the old Warplanes series in the background shot?

[beany]

Nice kit, looking forward to seeing it progress. Is that the old Warplanes series in the background shot?

That particular one was from a book of jets which were the same artwork as the Warplanes magazine partwork - of which I have 1 complete set and 3 volumes of a second set! I have a similar book of WWII planes with the same style of artwork - these obviously didn't feature in Warplane as it was only Modern Jets and Helicopters.

Cheers
Al.