Building Two Miniwing 1/144 Dassault MD.450 Ouragans
By Matt Bittner
Overview
Having both the older resin and newer plastic injected 1/144 Miniwing kits of the Dassault Ouragan I decided to build both, side by side. There are plusses and minuses to both, so I will go into detail about both of them in this article.
According to Wikipedia:
"The Dassault M.D.450 Ouragan (French: Hurricane) is a French fighter-bomber developed and produced by Dassault Aviation. It has its origins in a private venture by Dassault to produce an all-French aircraft which would make use of jet propulsion, which subsequently would receive orders from the French Air Force.
"The Ouragan holds the distinction of being the first jet-powered French-designed combat aircraft to enter production, and thus played a key role in the resurgence of the French aviation industry following the Second World War. The Ouragan was operated by France, India, Israel and El Salvador. While in Israeli service, the type participated in both the Suez Crisis and the Six-Day War."
The Builds
As I mentioned, since I had both the resin and injected plastic Miniwing kits I decided to build both, side-by-side. The first, major difference between the two is the break-out of parts. The resin kit has a one-piece fuselage while the injected kit is broken into two halves, split vertically. The second difference you'll notice is with the canopy: the resin canopy is all-inclusive, which has the rear, non-clear part as part of the clear part, while the injected kit has the rear part as part of the fuselage halves. In addition, the resin kit comes with both a clear resin canopy and a vac-formed example; I opted for the resin canopy. The nice thing about the resin kit is how thin the trailing edges are; the nice thing about the injected kit is, well, it's injected. The biggest problem with the resin kit is the lack of depth in the main wheel wells while the injected kit has this area more too-scale.
Both cockpits are satisfactory if closing the canopy, so nothing was done to either aside from painting and adding seat belts to the injected kit; the resin kit came with decal seat belts. Odd that Minwing no longer includes those on their decal sheets in their injected kits; however, they still include instrument panel decals. I added weight to the inside of the injected kit; the resin kit actually didn't need any, thankfully, because adding it would be difficult. But now that was all finished, the injected fuselage halves were glued together and thankfully there wasn't a lot of putty needed on the seams.
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I needed to do some sanding on the injected-kit's canopy to get it to fit better. This is where a vac replacement would be better, but the resin kit's wouldn't work since the breakout is different between the two. After polishing the canopy back to its luster, it was then added to the kit, as was the resin-kit's resin canopy.
The wings were now added to both and again, with careful dry fit not much putty was needed; the same with the horizontal tail parts. Now I had two Ouragan kits ready for priming and painting. While the resin kit came with canopy masks, the injected kit didn't so I used the masks from Peewit which worked extremely well. Be aware that the forward-most nose gear door is molded in situ with the fuselage half on the injected kit and of course I broke mine off so had to fashion another; note that I mounted the new one closed which is wrong. Other things I did to both kits was sand all the landing gear doors thinner, for a more scale-like appearance.
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Now it was time for the Vallejo gloss-black primer and once that dried, I sprayed both with Vallejo Metal Color Chrome. Once that was dry I then masked various panels - different on each plane - and sprayed other Metal Color paints to get a difference in hues. I then glossed both with Quick Shine and applied the decals. While the injected kit was the bagged version with Salvadoran decals I didn't want to finish it as such, so with the generosity of Minwing he sent the decals for the French and Indian markings that you see. One thing I did different was I thought the Indian fin-flash was a better size on the resin kit's decals so I used those over the ones that Miniwing provided for the injected kit. Once all the painting was finished and decals applied, I then sprayed another gloss coat over everything, did a minimal panel line wash, then finished with another gloss coat over all. Now I had two finished Ouragans on my shelf.
Conclusion
After taking the pictures I had noticed I mounted the nose gear on the resin kit (with French markings) in the wrong place, so I removed it and put it in its correct place. This is a flaw with the resin kit's instructions. Also note that on the injected kit the forward-most nose gear door should remain open; I looked at an image of the MD.450A and thought it was indicative of the entire series, which it wasn't. But I won't correct this one, instead keeping that in mind as I build the next ones.
Which I will. I have one more resin and two injected Ouragans to build and will build one into the 'A', earlier version, and use the Shelf Oddity photoetch set on the resin kit, and the RetroWings replacement cockpits on the injected kits. Now I need to figure out how to get my hands on the FFSMC Ouragan decals. I truly enjoyed building these kits.
Huge thanks to Miniwing for the review kits and help with the extra decals.