IPMS South Africa - Kit Review 1/72 High Planes

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Kit Review 1/72 High Planes - Cheetah C

Written by Anton Dyason - IPMS SA Media Group

Saturday, 26 February 2000

Page 2 of 2

Construction:

Multi media kit.

The cockpit on the Cheetah C is classified and this makes building the Cheetah C a bit difficult as no references are available. Only option is to use modeller's artistic licence and work to the best of your imagination. The kit's cockpit is made up of a few parts that need to sand down very carefully in order to get the fit just right. Work slowly and test fit often. I have to admit for modellers that have not seen the aircraft and not familiar with Mirage type cockpits, it would be very difficult to work out how far from each other the parts fit. This is the reason for the Cheetah galleries on the IPMS SA site. But bear in mind, that once the canopy is in place, very little is in fact visible. Rather concentrate on the ejection seat and paint the seat using various colours for the different components. Unlike most modern ejection seats, the Martin Baker JM6, as used in the Cheetah C is quite a colourful seat. Most of these colourful components are found in the head rest. As the seat is also on the classified list, one can obtain good references of the head rest, when the aircraft is displayed on static. See the galleries. For the rest of the seat, again modeller's artistic licence is the only way. As Mirage type cockpits are very small in general - one needs to pay special attention to the seat as this is the most visible component in the cockpit area. At this point This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it aftermarket parts from South Africa released a neat little photo etched set for this specific kit. This includes the top ejection seat firing handle and some other components for the resin ejection seat. If you are going to build this kit, the PE set is a must and add a number of small details. I used an overall flat black colour for the instrument panels, side panel consoles and rear bulk head. The rest of the cockpit was painted in a light grey colour. Once the cockpit is complete every item can be installed and the fuselage halves mated. Remember to add some nose weight. The plastic used are very brittle so use care when scraping or cutting some of the flash. The fitment of the wings to the fuselage is probably the most difficult part of the project. Due to the compound curves of the Cheetah, the manufacturer is unable to mould the correct thickness of the wings on their injection machine. If you are used to Tamiya, don't expect the same quality - this kit requires a bit of work to get it into shape. Although tedious to sand and fit, we are modellers and with a bit of effort you will get it to fit. Some modellers have used wings form the 1/72 Kfir kits, but bear in mind the wings on the C model is slightly different. A bit of filler was required on the wing-fuselage joint. But it was not a real problem for me to thin the wing's leading edge to the correct shape. Just sand and test fit often. As I received one of the later mouldings, the vertical stabiliser presented a few errors. The biggest being, if viewed from the front, the RWR align up perfectly on the vertical stabiliser - on my example the left RWR was at a lower position. Also the RWR itself was not a very crisp moulding. It took some time to scratch build new ones and get them correct in shape and aligned. Another problem area was the intakes (the moulding on one of the intakes was not complete). Thin plastic card and superglue sanded to shape, proved to be the most effective solution. The ventral fairing and refuelling probe were simply attached. The PE set from Moraind include a number of the external details like strakes, canon fairing, coms antennas, flare/chaff dispensers etc. Next was the vac form canopy and with this medium I have to admit I haven't had a lot of success with. But use luke warm water to warm the canopy slightly, before trimming the canopy. This will prevent cracking. DO test fit often as only one canopy is included in the kit. I used a pair of rubber bands to keep the canopy in place while the glue sets.

Cheetah C no 371 - display aircraft at SAAF 80.

Next was the painting stage and therefore needed to decide on which aircraft to model. Initially, I wanted to model an air to ground variant with LGBs, but my efforts to scratch built the complex seeker head didn't quite work out. As time was running out - the model was due for display at Scale Modelworld 2000, I decided on No 371, the display aircraft at SAAF 80 - flown by the legendary 2 Sqdn display pilot, D. Dormehl. Canopy was masked off, followed by pre shading in flat black.

The kit include the painting colour schemes as first mentioned on this Website and the model was painted using Testors paints, in the air to ground scheme. Clear varnish was applied in the areas that needed decals. I used an old Ken Smy decal sheet to make up the serial numbers. The Cheetah aircraft uses reverse shading on the stencils, which means as the air to ground scheme is a darker shade the lighter stencils as supplied by the decal sheet should be used. However this turned out to be too light. Once dry the decals were removed and replaced by the darker shade decals. However, this also turned out not be quite correct in shade, but as the markings and paints fade very quickly in the harsh SA sun, it could work for a well used aircraft. Problem was my colour scheme was too new and not consistent with the decals. As national markings are in the lighter grey coloured areas, I masked the decals and by colour tuning the main tones of the colour scheme, air brushed new shades over the main colours. However, this re-spray effectively washed out the pre shading! Pastels and some panel high lighting finished the faded and somewhat used appearance of the colour scheme. Note: unlike the D and E models the cheetah logo runs towards the tail on the port side of the aircraft. All that remained was the under carriage. As this is in white metal I used a medium all-metal stitching needle to polish the parts. This gives far more favourable results than the brass wire brush used in a Dremel or Proxxon tool, but takes a long time to do by hand. The under carriage is not all white as is sometimes stated but rather a light grey with a slight shade of sea green. The wheel wells and insides of undercarriage doors are semi-gloss white. Added some hydraulic piping etc and the Moraind PE set offer a lot of detail parts for the under carriage including some of the outer doors.

In all, while not Tamiya quality, this kit require a bit of work, but with some effort can be build up into a very neat model. I displayed the model at Scale Modelworls 2000 and it generated quite a bit of interest. It is still the most talked about model kit in my collection of build models.

Review example from High Planes Model Kits.