French aviation has produced a number of very successful aircraft over the last 50 years. Were I to ask the general modeling population to name one French design, undoubtedly, most would respond by saying 'Mirage'. And they would be correct. However, there has been another aircraft that has probably been built in larger numbers than any of the Mirage family. That would be the Fouga Magister training aircraft.

Not only widely used by the French Air Force, but also exported to at least a dozen countries, the Magister and its derivatives are easy to maintain, and fly. The perfect jet trainer. The Magister was only recently retired from the French Air Force and is still in use by several countries including Ireland, Israel and Bangladesh.

The Magister has not exactly been well represented in kit form, especially in 1/48. There are three kits generally available. Two of them, Sanger and Koster, are basically vacuform kits. The third is from Fondierie Miniatures (FM) and is a short run injected kit. I have not seen the FM kit, but if it is like other French short run kits, will be a challenge to complete. Probably the best would be the Koster kit. Though primarily a vacuform, Koster kits are well known for their superb engineering and offer a great number of parts in resin and/or metal.

This particular sheet covers 9 aircraft from 5 countries.

The first is  a Bangladesh Magister from 1989. It is overall yellow with light orange panels on the wings and tail. The nose ad tip tanks are in da-glo red. A very colorful bird!

Next is a Gabonese AF Magister. I'll assume it is in silver as no color info is given on the sheet. Two nose marking options are given for this plane.

The third scheme is from the Togolese AF from 1980. It is in sand, green, and brown uppers with a light grey lower.

An Irish Air Corps Magister is next. It is in overall silver with daglo red nose, fuselage band and tip tanks. You get markings to do any one of the five aircraft of the Silver Swallows aerobatic team aircraft from 1997.

Finally there are five different aircraft from the Finnish AF. All of them are overall silver, but four of them have slightly different markings on them; mostly having to do with the daglo stripes/bands or lack of them. These stripes/bands are not provided on the sheet but can be either painted on or cut from a solid color sheet.

Any one of these schemes would look great on the kit of your choice and is a most welcome addition. As with other Max Decals, it is printed by Propagteam and is to the highest quality of clarity and registration. 

Max Decals has color copies of the instruction sheet at their website. Just click on the hyperlink below to access it. Max Decals informs me that their decals are being distributed by Squadron so obtaining them should not be a problem.

Review copy courtesy of Max Decals. Thanks for your support

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