Dassault Mirage 2000C-S1

The Mirage 2000, the 3rd generation Mirage fighter, first flew in 1978. The aircraft became a veritable success story with over 600 aircraft produced and with several export customers. My model represents an early production version serving with the Escadron de Chasse 1/2 "Cigognes" ("Storks"); the unit's name refers to the stork insignia whose origins go all the way back to World War 1 and famed French aces such as Georges Guynemer of Escadron N3 and René Fonck of Escadron SPA103. Interestingly, in all photographs of EC 1/2 aircraft I found, the storks are different on either side of the aircraft.

The Mirage 2000Cs were eventually upgraded to a newer Mirage 2000-5 standard. The new aircraft is externally more or less identical, but features many internal improvements. Despite the commercial success of the Mirage 2000, Dassault's private venture Mirage 4000, a much heavier twin-engined fighter, never found any customers.

Construction Notes

The Italeri kit is generally accurate and well detailed, but suffers from heavy (and partly incorrect) panel lines; most notably, the nose radome (a single piece of fiberglass in the original aircraft) has many deep panel lines. Care must also be taken in assembling the airframe, as the fit of the major parts is not perfect. I used a fair amount of Tamiya putty and Mr. Surfacer 1200 to fill various gaps. The review of the kit in [8] found many of the same problems.

I wanted to use the large centerline drop tank in my model. The tank is molded in two halves with the pylon, and unfortunately the curvature of the ventral fuselage does not match that of the pylon. The only sensible solution I found was to use the other (similar) pylon from the kit, and cut the original pylon off the drop tank. Gluing the pylon alone in place allowed it to flex just enough to closely fit the fuselage; some putty and Mr. Surfacer were needed afterwards, though. I painted the tank by spraying many different shades of Alclad.

The cockpit "tub" does not fit well inside the fuselage, and leaves gaps behind the ejection seat. Rather than filling the gaps I cut a piece of thin styrene to form a new bulkhead. I also added a hydraulic piston jack for the canopy. For the instrument panel I cut a mask that let me paint the instrument dials; I put small drops of Future floor wax on them afterwards to represent their glass faces. The kit's ejection seat is not bad, comes in three parts, and only really needed photo-etch seatbelts to be added.

Just to improve things a bit, I cut new landing gear doors from 10 thou styrene sheet. I also lost one of the Matra R.530 missile tail fins to the "carpet monster" and had to cut a replacement.

Cockpit in place; some weight added.

Ready for filling the windshield seams.

Nose "panel lines" filled, ready for sanding.

First attempt at the external fuel tank.

Aftermarket Additions

I used wheels/tires and a new engine tailpipe from Res/Kit. The former are really nice, the latter is perhaps a bit of an overkill with a total of eight resin and photo-etch parts. Interestingly, the afterburner nozzle is missing its sealing ring (despite being shown in the instructions). I cut off the ring from the kit's nozzle part and grafted it onto the resin part. The end result of all this is of course way better than if had settled with just what the kit had to offer.

Res/kit nozzle and kit sealing ring (cut off from the kit nozzle).

Ring in place; note the gap.

Tailpipe and nozzle ready to be mated.

Tailpipe/nozzle combination waiting for paint.

Canopy and the hydraulic arm.

Hydraulic arm installed.

Colors and Insignia

The standard camouflage for Mirage 2000s is an overall light gray with medium grayish blue pattern over it on upper surfaces. Most sources quote FS 36375 for the gray and FS 35164 for the blue; my starting point was Mr. Color semi-gloss lacquers #366 (intermediate blue) and #308 (gray) for which the manufacturer quotes those exact FS numbers. In my opinion, though, in most photographs the blue looks maybe a bit closer to FS 35177, but this is never an exact science anyway.

I found several photographs of early batch Mirage 2000Cs serving with EC 1/2, including two photos (from both sides) of the individual aircraft I chose to model: [4, pp.114-115] and [12, p.72]. Using the photographs as a guide, I produced artwork for the two different stork emblems. The general idea was to mask and spray white as a background for a decal, and have all other colors come from the decal. The masks I created use the technique I devised earlier where the masks fit prominent "landmarks" of the airframe to ensure exact placement (see the image below and this article for a description). I also created a decal for the tactical code in the nose, but most other decals came from a sheet by Decals Carpena ("Mirage 2000 1^ere partie", ref. 72.54). The kit's own decal sheet was unusable: Not only where the decals awfully thick, but also the printing was off register. I was, however, able to use the decals for formation lights from the kit's sheet (with those it does not so much matter if the decals are a bit thick).

These are the paints I used:

I finished the whole aircraft with Alclad Klear Kote lacquers. First Gloss, then I applied all the decals, then Gloss again. I sprayed the nose radome with Flat, masked it off, and sprayed the rest of the aircraft with Semi-Matte.

Initial camouflage pattern painted with my deVilbiss Aerograph Super 63.

Wheel wells masked for painting.

Background of the stork emblem masked.

Completed stork background. Note that the left and right hand side are different.

Decals for the model.

The original stork emblem on Georges Guynemer's SPAD VII "Vieux Charles", on display at the Museé de l'Air in Le Bourget, photographed in 2004 (SMA photo).

Masks for the white background.

Mask placement.

References Used

The Mirage 2000 is a modern combat aircraft and thus well documented, but if you search the Web you are mostly going to find pictures of the newer Mirage 2000-5. Below is a list of the sources I used:

1. Airfix Model World December 2023
2. Air Enthusiast No.101 (September/October 2002)
3. Air International September 1980
4. Air International March 1990
5. Avions Octobre 95
6. Fast and Classic Jets Spring 1995
7. Model Aircraft Volume 12 Issue 4 - April 2013
8. Scale Aircraft Modelling January 2006
9. Scale Aircraft Modelling April 2006
10. Scale Aviation Modeller Volume 6 Issue 7; July 2000
11. Super Fighters (Koku-Fan Illustrated 94-4 No.75)
12. World Air Power Journal Autumn/Fall 1992

Scale plans can be found in [3, 4, 10, 12], color profiles in [2, 7, 9, 10, 12]. Review of the Italeri kit (as reissued by Revell) can be found in [8], and a build article of Modelsvit's newer kit in [1].

Dassault's ill-fated "Super Mirage 4000" prototype on display at the Museé de l'Air in Le Bourget, photographed in 2003 (SMA photo).

The movie "Les chevaliers du ciel"

Mirage 2000 -aircraft were quite prominently featured in the 2005 French movie "Les chevaliers du ciel" (released in the US under the name "Sky Fighters"). The movie, advertised as "Top Gun for a new generation", was a reimagining of the 1960s French comics series "Les Aventures de Tanguy et Laverdure" (which also served as the basis for a 1960s TV show and a 1980s TV show featuring the same characters).

I am not embarrassed to admit that I watched the movie two three four numerous times. At the time of writing, the movie is available for streaming from Tubi TV, but I could not find either of the TV shows to view.