Italeri 1/72 Dassault Rafale M

ITALERI 1:72 DASSAULT RAFALE M

Reviewer: Mark B (SMAKR Webmaster) (smakr1@optusnet.com.au)
Kit Built + Review Submitted: 30 May 2009

Kit Details:

No. 036 - Dassault Rafale M - 1:72, Italeri

Aircraft History:

Dassault's ACX (Avion de Combat Experimentale) program evolved as an early 1980's technology demonstrator for a national combat aircraft program even before France withdrew from the EFA (later known as the Eurofighter) project in August 1985. The Rafale A testbed was first flown in early July 1986 establishing and proving the basic design, configuration and performance of the later versions of the Rafale. The RBE2 multi-mode electronically-scanned radar is one of the first phased-array fighter radars to be developed in Europe, or the West for that matter.

The first main production version was the Rafale D which ended up being some 4% smaller in size than the Rafale A testbed aircraft. The Rafale D also employed discreet stealth like elements in its airframe, most of which were continued in later versions. There is some speculation that Dassault also used this version to develop and use more "active stealth" systems to further reduce the aircraft's radar cross-section, but this is classified, and may be used as a basis for future aircraft projects.

The Rafale C is the main French Air Force single seat multi-role combat version which fulfils a variety of roles similar to the Tornado F3 in UK service, interceptor, ground attack and so on. The Rafale B was initially developed as a two-seat trainer version but has seen service as a long range attack aircraft and has been produced in more numbers than the other Rafale versions with initial estimates suggesting the French Air Force would split B's and C's to the ratio of 60:40.

The Rafale M is simply the carrierborne / French Navy Version of the Rafale C, and maintains almost identical characteristics in every regard, with the exception of a few small modifications for Navy work, most notably an arrestor hook, no forward centreline pylon and a "jump strut" nosewheel. The prototype Rafale M first flew in December 1991 and was used as a development aircraft for several years before full production versions of the Rafale M started flying in 1999. The initial M01 version that this kit represents has now been upgraded to M-F1, M-F2 and M-F3 aircraft, all of which have some minor modifications and differences to the M01 prototype.

The Kit:

Inside the now quite familiar Italeri blue-bordered sturdy box are two light grey sprues which float loosely in the box containing around 55 crisp, flash-free, very nice looking parts. A clear sprue containing three parts is contained in a separate plastic bag which is a nice change from most Italeri kits. While the surface detail is quite good and very reasonably detailed, sadly the panel lines are raised which always worries me if I have to use any filler. While the main wheel wells are devoid of any detail there is some plumbing and structural detail provided in the nosewheel bay. All in all it looks like a nice kit on the sprue and I was eager to get started!

Inaccurate painting instructions from Italeri as noted below
- also hard to distinguish between the shades (that is on the box, not the small picture above!)

Instructions:

These are pretty much as we have come to expect from Italeri, a long fold out strip with each page roughly being around A5 in size. The first two pages are devoted to a brief aircraft history overview, useful modelling advice and Alphabetic labelled painting information from FS and Modelmaster ranges, all of which are in several languages. After a sprue map the 8 easy to follow assembly steps are provided which take up the remaining "pages" except the final one, which is devoted to a two-view painting and decal guide for the aircraft. Apart from the otherside of the tail fin, which is thankfully provided as an inset diagram, apparently all the decals on the port side are the same on the right, and presumably no decals go on the underside of the aircraft! The bottom of the box also provides a full colour two-view only painting diagram of the kit. A colour scheme which I don't think is accurate.

Construction:

As ever we commence construction in the cockpit, where you are provided with a flat tub onto which go a seat and control column. These both appear reasonable miniature versions of the real things, and include subtle detail such as seat harnesses. An Instrument panel is also provided, which has generic instrumentation molded onto it. These are then installed upside down, into the top fuselage half. Before proceeding several holes need to be opened up in the lower fuselage half to allow for stores to be displayed later. Obviously it is up to you therefore which, if any, stores you want to display but I would suggest not opening the two holes closest to the nose wheel bay as my information suggests this centreline pylon was removed from the aircraft this kit produces. The underwing stores hold the huge fuel tank and after some thinking about this, in spite of none of my photos of M01 carrying this, I decided to open up the holes and put it on.

The upper and lower fuselage halves affix together very nicely, trapping the non-cemented (in spite of the instructions not telling you this) canards which have a centre axle so you can move them later. I left the nose cone off until later in construction but this also fits very nicely, maybe the tiniest amount of filler required to achieve the perfect join. The nose wheel bay has plenty of plumbing and internal detail and it took me two looks at the instruction sheet to realise that it goes "back to front" than what I thought. I also installed the doors in the closed position and these fit very well if done with care.

I found the intake sub assembly a little difficult to work out but through a variety of test fits, I worked out how the pieces should go and how they should be affixed to the fuselage, with again virtually no fit problems at all here. The only major issue I had with the kit here, and which continued for remainder of the construction phase is that you are required to install a variety of small ducts, scoops, tailfin 'stabilisers' and an underwing 'block'. The instructions indicate very vague placement, and without any scribed lines on the kit itself, it is up to you to work out exactly the right placement, which I found quite frustrating. The photos I had helped but really you are on your own, and of course the parts are overscaled in the instruction drawing. Test fit, mark out your spot and install accordingly making sure they line up where they need to with each other.

The rear exhaust is made up of two pipes installed into their nozzles and then slotted into the back of the fuselage. It's best to do all this in one hit so that you get the right angle and are ensured the pipes and nozzles will fit properly - which they do. I also decided to do this before adding the tailfin (I've been caught out in the past where the tailfin is supposed to go on after exhaust) - I don't think it matters in this kit, but I wanted to make sure. The tailfin fits very well with a very minor gap where it meets the spine and then the two part canopy fits nigh on perfectly.

Stores are made up of wingtip AAM missiles, underfuselage AGMs and two large fuel tanks underwings. The pylons really benefited from a scrape of the hobby knife to get the seam lines out, and the panel lines around the holes on the fuselage had to be sanded down to get a flush fit. Usually stores have have holes or slots where you attach it to the pylon, unfortunately none of the missiles have this, they are attached to the pylon directly, so I decided against painting them first (as often they will easily come off) and affixed them to their pylons. The only pylon I had some problems with were the wingtip ones, they were easy to affix but they really need to allowed to dry properly in the right position before affixing any missiles.

It was now time for painting, construction was a breeze which was a nice change to a number of modern and newly tooled Italeri kits I have built in the past few years, I have come to expect some major gaps and a fair few fit problems, but the Rafale was very straight forward.

Colour Schemes:

The Rafale M"01" Development aircraft from the French Navy, 1993 is the only version this kit provides to be built so you will need to hunt around for a later M production version - I was a little disappointed by this considering the kit is dated 2007 which is when a number of later M versions entered service with the French Navy, so I was hoping one of these would be provided as a choice - not a pre production version more than a decade and a half old!

I think the overall FS 36375 scheme on the bottom of the box is wrong and there are some subtle paint components missing from the actual aircraft, which I have several photos of. The instructions give a different colour - stating that the aircraft is finished in overall FS36320 and I do think this is more likely to be accurate than the bottom of the box version.

I chose to paint this aircraft in Humbrol 128 FS 36320 (rather than H127 - FS36375) as I thought this colour was more accurate but I will leave your own choices up to you. The tip of the fin above the radar housing is clearly a lighter colour in photos, which I decided to paint in H127, something the kit fails to identify. I am sorry but I find this fairly typical of Italeri, you have to research your subject and paint information rather than relying on their advice, particularly with modern jets. Even now I don't know if I have actually chosen the right shade, perhaps H126 medium grey is more accurate?

Decals:

The decal sheet is small but it is printed by Zanchetti so their usual high quality thin, matt, excellent printing and colour register, standards were evident. The first thing I noticed however was that the M01, Rafale and MARINE decals are in a light grey colour, whereas the photos I have suggest these may in fact be very pale grey or white. In the photos they look the same colour as the other stencilling which is provided as white on the decal sheet. It's hard to tell based on sunlight and the like in photos, so it may be an incorrect observation on my part. Similarly the navigation illumination strips on the rear fuselage and tail fin appear a light yellow colour in photos, whereas on the decal sheet they are white. Finally the Rafale signature seems to include a small yellow strip, perhaps another nav illumination one, which is missing from the kit. If you want an absolute historically accurate M01, you may have to hunt around for an aftermarket alternative.

Another small note of accuracy was that I soon noticed not only do the colour schemes conflict between instruction sheet and bottom of the box, but also placement (only in a minor sense) of the decals. Unfortunately I can't tell you to follow either, as both are sometimes correct over the other. For example, decal 1 (warning triangles) are incorrectly placed too low in the instructions, the bottom of the box is more accurate. However, the french fin flash on the tail fin is more accurate in the instructions than on the bottom of the box! Where the two agree, this is usually fairly accurate. So the best thing you can do is apply the decals with a photo of the real aircraft beside you!! As for the application of the decals, they were superb, very thin, easy to move into position with Gunze Sangyo setting solution and look painted on when sealed with a gloss cote. Unfortunately those light grey decals I mentioned above are hard to see.

Accuracy:

I scrutinised the kit against many photos of the real aircraft pretty thoroughly and this is probably based on my own experience of many Italeri kits coming out of modern aircraft not being quite up to mark in the accuracy department. I was looking for a number of subtle problems you often find in these kits of theirs, first I honed in the absence of the arrestor hook - but it was there, the nose probe, but that was also there and it looks like they even got the jump start nosewheel into the kit. I was pleasantly surprised that the kit had got most things right. There are a couple of points though, one is obviously the colours as mentioned above, the grey decals versus white ones and the other is that the kit includes the forward centreline fuselage where my references indicate this was removed from the M01. Dimensionally it is overscaled by 4 mm span and 6 mm length based on the measurements of the single seater Rafale C which the Rafale M comes from, because I haven't found any real definitive measurement reference on the M version.

Overall Recommendation:

This was a surprisingly excellent, easy to build kit that was also reasonably detailed with a good acceptable level of accuracy overall. I'd recommend to all modelling skills without hesitation, and enjoyed the quick nature of this project. I was also happy to find a new tooling from Italeri that wasn't over engineered nor had lots of gap problems.

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