Revell AG 1/72 Mirage 2000C
The French Air Force developed a requirement for the Avion
de Combat Futur (ACF)
(French: "Future combat aircraft") in the early 1970s.Dassault
offered its twin-engine Super Mirage for the ACF requirement. However, the Super
Mirage was to be too costly and was canceled in 1975. Dassault
offered the single-engine Mirage 2000 as an alternative and was given approval
to proceed by the French government on 18 December 1975. This
was a return to the first generation Mirages, but with several important
innovations that tried to solve their shortcomings. Project chiefs were B.C.
Valliéres, J.Cabrière, J.C. Veber and B.Revellin-Falcoz.
Development of this small aircraft would also give the company a
competitor to the General
Dynamics F-16
Fighting Falcon, which had defeated the Dassault
Mirage F1 in
a contest for a new fighter for the air forces of Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands
and Norway.
Small single-engined fighters were clearly the most appreciated by foreign
customers, as experience with the larger, twin-engined Mirage
4000 would
show.
The prototype made its first flight in 10 March 197] with
test pilot Jean Coreau at the controls. Despite the new technologies applied,
basing the new aircraft on the Mirage
III allowed
the development of a prototype in only 27 months from the program start to the
first flight.In that summer, at the Farnborough
Air Show, this machine displayed not only excellent handling capabilities, but
also a full control at 204 km/h and 26 degree angle
of attack. This was totally unexpected in a delta-wing fighter, and proved how
CCD controls were capable of overcoming the delta wing shortcomings related to
poor low-speed control, while retaining the advantages, such as low-drag, low radar
cross section, ideal high speed aerodynamics and simplicity, provided by the
absence of horizontal tail surfaces. The Mirage 2000 was one of
the stars of that air show and became the direct adversary for the F-16, which
shared the CCD control and relaxed stability. The
02 Prototype followed in 18 September 1978 and 03 in 26 September 1979. After
400 hours of flight, they were sent to CEV (Centre d'Essais
en Vol). The 04 Prototype was a demonstrator made by
Dassault for its own purposes, and finally the first dual-seat Mirage 2000B flew
in 11 October 1980.
The first production example flew on 20 November 1982, and
the aircraft went into operational service in November 1982.They
were practically pre-production aircraft, because they had no SARH missiles
(RDM-1 radar) and the first model of SNECMA 'Super
Atar' M-53-2.
The Mirage 2000 production line was shut down in 2007 after the last
aircraft was delivered. The last Mirage 2000 was delivered on 23 November 2007
to the Hellenic
Air Force.
Over 600 aircraft were built and
it is in service in nine countries as of 2009.
As
the package states 'Made in Italy', I'm going to assume this is a reboxed
Italeri kit. The only other Mirage 2000 kit I can think of off the top of my
head that isn't resin or short run is the Heller kit. That one was a bear to
build due to the poor intake fit and I built a pair of them. This one looks
to be a much nicer build, though not surprisingly, the parts breakdown is
pretty much the same as with the older Heller kit.
The kit comes on two grey and one clear sprue. The clear sprue has a
separate canopy and windscreen so that it can be posed open. The rest of the
kit is your standard engraved plastic with the detailing being a bit softer
than what you'd get with, say, a Hasegawa kit. By that I mean the edges of
the engravings are more rounded than squared off.
The Mirage 2000 is not a kit festooned with all sorts of stuff so the basic
airframe is pretty simple to build. There is a nice multi-piece cockpit with
raised instrument and switch detailing. The three piece ejection seat is
fairly well done, but like all jet kits, a more detailed resin replacement
will really help. There are holes in the lower wing to open if you want to
carry a full load of missiles as there are racks on the lower fuselage to be
installed. You can, of course, leave those off. Slots for the wing pylons
are already made for you. The nose needs 20gms of weight to prevent tail
sitting.
I dare say a goodly proportion of the parts are for various weapons and drop
tanks. I'm totally ignorant when it comes to French
weapons,
but those supplied look good. You have two styles of centerline tank that
can be use; one without rear fins.
Instructions are typical Revell; well drawn and using only Revell paints.
That means the exterior colors will need to be mixed or you can get the
proper shades from Colourcoats or Xtracolor paints (to name a couple of
brands that do French AF shades). Markings are for one aircraft, the box art
plane from Tiger Meet 2003. It is with EC 5/330, the test unit at Mont-de-Marsan.
These markings are rather simple as Tiger Meet markings go. Decals are well
printed and matte. You get several options on the tiger fin markings,
depending on how you end up doing the camo scheme. A nice touch .
So far, this one has my vote as best 1/72 mainstream
Mirage 2000C kit, especially after building the Heller versions. It should prove
to make into a very nice model.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirage_2000
March 2010
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As
the package states 'Made in Italy', I'm going to assume this is a reboxed
Italeri kit. The only other Mirage 2000 kit I can think of off the top of my
head that isn't resin or short run is the Heller kit. That one was a bear to
build due to the poor intake fit and I built a pair of them. This one looks
to be a much nicer build, though not surprisingly, the parts breakdown is
pretty much the same as with the older Heller kit.