1/48 FM Mirage IIIE Part 1 

by Emad Tabsh

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  Lebanon National Day 2005 

 

I decided to build FM's 1/48th. Mirage IIIE model as used by the Lebanese Air Force in the late 60's and early seventies of the last century.

To give a brief history, Lebanon bought from France in 1967 10 single seat Mirage IIIE and 2 twin seat versions.

The LAF did not use the Mirage extensively and ended most of their time stored in one of the LAF's airbases in northern Lebanon .

One single seat and one twin seat were lost during their operational life and the remaining 10 were sold to the Pakistani Air Force in the year 2000.

The Mirages were identical in finish to the French AF in color and did not have a Doppler radar and lacked the usage of Sidewinders. They had however the Matra 530 capability.

I was probably one of the luckiest civilians to see and stand by the Mirage fleet before it went to Pakistan ……I was an eye witness and bid a day long farewell to beautiful deltas….but this is a long story.  

The FM model consists of the Heller 1/48th. Mirage IIIC model and FM's parts to convert it to the E version.

FM supplies 2 new fuselage halves and a set of resin and metal ones.

The resin parts are beautifully finished and the metal ones need cleaning as is the case.

The wings of the Heller C version go along the FM fuselage.

Since no aftermarket parts exist for the model, I decided to use the sets included with Eduard's Mirage III C kit such as the photoetched and masking set as well as some parts of the model itself.

The first thing I did was to carefully study the whole process. The construction looks OK on paper but be ready for LOTS of work…

I started with the fuselage halves .Being  limited run injection parts, the detail and the panel lines are all there but the plastic is rough and needs sanding. I had to engrave and deepen all the detail before sanding it as I was afraid of losing it. I added two plastic beams on the inside of the fuselage to strengthen the joint and to prevent it from collapsing.

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The resin sets for the nose and main landing gear bays are worth the whole kit. Very nice detail….I had to trim as much as possible from the resin and had to thin the wings to make the fit as good as possible. The resin parts once fitted on the insides of the wing left a big gap to make room for the fuselage halves to fit between them, but I elected to close the gaps later with thin plastic strip.

The Heller wings have some of the detail engraved, but I added all the rivets and panel lines using photographic references and Eduard's model too. However, I did notice that some minor panels on the top of the wings do differ slightly on the "E" from the "C" version. I also had to engrave two holes for the position lights on top of the wings. The flaprons were freed a bit and cemented in a lowered position.

When finished, I sprayed the gear bays with black enamel and followed it with silver to check for any construction flaws.

The LAF's Mirage had the antenna on the base of the fin, so I simply cut the one from the Eduard's kit and added it to the fuselage.

The intakes were detailed with some plastic rod and engraved a small panel that was missing from the kit's part.

Emad

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Photos and text © by Emad Tabsh