This all started awhile back when I got Eduard's 1/48 weekend edition Mirage IIICJ a few years ago, and really became a reality yesterday with a visit to the hobby shop. Piper Hobby, near Dulles Airport in VA, is unfortunately the last dedicated non-chain LHS that i know of from NOVA down through Fredericksburg. I went in to see what they had and maybe buy an armor kit when I noticed a 50% off all merchandise sign on the front door. I got excited, until I learned it is because they are going out of business. The store had 0 armor, but lots of airplanes, AM parts, and special kits they put together for a discount. I found Heller's 1/48 Mirage III C/B hi-tech special edition kit, which the LHS' sticker said included extra PE and Decals, all for $55 (before the %50). I went ahead and got it, along with an Academy 1/48 Mirage III C for $20 before discount. Along with some other AM goodies for a couple other kits, I had to drag myself out of the store before I bought more than I'd hope to build in the next decade. When I got home I opened them up and low and behold the extra PE in the Heller kit include 4 sets of Eduard's PE for the 1/48 Heller kit, and 2 for the Eduard 1/48 Mirage III CJ (which i already had). It also had about 6 resin ejection seats, and at least one AM decal sheet (there were way more in the Heller kit, but I believe they may go with the special edition boxing). So immediately my mind started racing...and with some preliminary research this project has begun.
The three Mirages....
Preliminary research concludes that externally there wasn't a difference between the initial Mirage III C's and the Mirage III CJ's shipped to Israel. I will continue building the Eduard and paint it in the markings that come with the kit, the famous 59 bird which was flown under a couple different serials, 159 and 259 at least.
I started the Eduard build awhile ago (June 2014), progressed through just the cockpit and stopped there. I had started a WIP thread there which for reference purposes will post here but will pick up the remainder of that build here.
http://cs.finescale.com/fsm/modeling_subjects/f/2/t/160780.aspx
The Heller kit is can be built as either a C or B (the two seater version) of which 4 or 5 (i have differing sources) were sent to Israel as Mirage III BJ's. Coincidentally the AM decals has one set for a 2 seater and it's in the natural metal scheme seen here (Wings Palette):
And last, and probably least is the academy kit. Since I can round out a third scheme from the AM decals with this Mirage I'm shooting for the Air Superiority markings seen below (Wings Palette):
The problem with this is that the Mirage III CJ's sporting this camo were all after 1971 and were modernized with the newer Atar 9C-3 power plants and thus had a different exhaust and rear than the earlier CJ's. The Heller kit provides an updated rear and exhaust in it's kit, but the Academy kit is noticeably undersized compared to the Heller and Eduard. The difference between the earlier and later versions can be seen below (Wings Palette):
I'm not sure if this is something I can scratch or not....since the Heller kit has that in there I might build that in the one seater version in the Air Superiority scheme, and the Academy in a single seater natural metal, we shall see. I've started on the Academy kit so far and it is lacking completely in detail. More on that in the next post.