Recently I began building the Kitty Hawk 1/48 Mirage F.1B and was looking for something different in the way of markings. To be honest, I am not drawn to special schemes and while I do them from time to time, would rather place my models in standard markings. An inquiry on the Modeling Madness Forum brought an answer from Jeroen Koen that a shop in the Netherlands carried some markings for the two seat Mirage F.1. I visited and found they had one sheet left so I ordered it. In about ten days, a package arrived with the decals.

This is the first time I have seen Berna decals and they look to be very nicely done. The colors are vibrant and the sheet comes with markings for four aircraft as well as a full stencil and markings suite for one aircraft. All four of the planes are in the standard blue-grey uppers with silver undersides, the scheme used for the air superiority Mirage F.1C and the two seaters. Later versions were specialized for ground attack so were appropriately camouflaged.

Of the four options, two of them are for before the nose codes were changed from the units to the base to which they were later attached. The other two are more modern with air base numbers in place of unit numbers. The sheet also includes different color roundel centers as the color went from a light to a darker blue at the end of the 1980s. Another change in the change from base to unit codes was the addition of 'Armee de l'air' on the fins.

So using the scan from the instructions (which are not in color) we have an aircraft coded 112-SC with ER2/33 'Savoie' from 2010, as well as 132-SW of EC2/30 'Normandie-Niemen' from 2009. These will have the later markings I mentioned earlier.

The other two are 33-FU from EC 3/33 'Lorraine', date not given and the other having the lighter roundel center from the training unit EC 3/5 'Comtat-Vensissin' in 1986. Color information is also provided in terms of mixing paints for the upper surface color, using Humbrol and Gunze paints. However, I believe that Xtracolor may have this shade premixed.

In all, it is a very nice, though somewhat pricey sheet and one that you may wish to seek out. The sheet was printed in 2011 so availability may not be the best.

June 2013

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