Italeri 1/32 Mirage IIIC SPA93 of the French Air Force

By Karim Bibi

This kit to be honest is not bad, but don't be fooled, this is not a "shake the box and out comes an airplane" type...

I am not going to go over all the niggles and inaccuracies this kit has, rather I will just give some very quick observations. I cannot ascertain those will be found in all the kits as I think mine was out of the initial production batch.

Overall I think there's nothing here that a modeler cant overcome, just need to have enough time and patience to see it through!

Through Nicolas's research on the actual airframe I built this is what he has discovered (my rough translation from our French emails, to English!).

The specific Mirage I built is part of SPA93 squadron, and it is a squadron that has been formed during WW1. SPA name was given back then because the squadron used to fly Spads. My specific airframe , number 50, has gone through a couple of designations which were 2-LE,13-PP,13-QP,2-EO,2-LL,10-RH,5-NC,10-SF, 10-LD of which there is a linked photo...

Concerning the additions, aftermarkets and mods I have done to the kit:

Paints were Tamiya and GSI acrylics (own mix using eyeballing and the help of iModelKit app on iPhone for the ratios), metallics were GSI's Mr Metal buffables for the underside...

Weathering was achieved using the salt technique, some fading of the acrylic paint using lacquer thinner, chipping using the hairspray method, Flory Models clay washes, enamel washes, oils for fading and streaking, and aquarel colour pencils for some of the chipping.

The kit has no decals except for the stencils. Everything else (including my approximation of the flying goose) has been painted on using some luck and home made stencils on my Silhouette Cameo cutter.

Build Photos


Finished Photos


© Karim Bibi 2016

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This article was published on Thursday, February 25 2016; Last modified on Thursday, February 25 2016