1/72 Lindberg Denel Cheetah CE

Gallery Article by Tigre del Aire on Nov 17 2009

 

Hello! grretings from Colombia, the land of Juan Valdez!
Hola! saludos desde Colombia, la tierra de Juan Valdez!

This time I bring the new acquisition of Ecuador Air Force, the Denel Cheetah CE, this model was made from a kit Lindberg made in Venezuela, the quality is not very good but much work is getting good results.

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First, a bit of History... 
The Atlas Cheetah was a fighter aircraft operated by the South African Air Force (SAAF) between 1986 and 2008. It was first built as a major upgrade of the Dassault Mirage III by the Atlas Aircraft Corpopration (later Denel) of South Africa (established 1965) in South Africa. Three different variants were created, the dual-seat Cheetah D, and the single-seat Cheetah E and Cheetah C. The Cheetah E was retired in 1992, and the SAAF had a mixture of 28 Cheetah Cs and Cheetah Ds in operational service until April 2008, when they were retired as the SAAF accepted into service the first of 26 Saab JAS 39 Gripens (17C/9D) which replaced them. (taken from Wikipedia)

The model had some difficulties, I had to adjust the nose of an F-16, so the adjustment was made with sprue, plastic card and putty; for successful linking up in the wings was used putty and glue, in addition to sand the surfaces, the cabin was full, did not bring the pilot's seat, so I used a kit I had in my parts store, side and front panels were also lander's front doors and air intakes to the fuselage, refueling probe was from another kit, but the shot is made with putty.

As always, was painting with a brush, the nozzle ring is made entirely with putty and sandpaper, the national insignia is hand-made template, we used some decals from other kits, the ventral tank was one of the wing tanks, which were cut to put 2 missiles AIM-9, the guns were pierced with a needle to make them more realistic, the tip of the nose was made with putty and stretched sprue.

This was a good project if you have adequate information and enough time to make appropriate modifications, in the official website of IPMS South Africa are enough data, in addition to Wikipedia, Airliners.net and Google.

Saludos desde Colombia, la tierra de Juan Valdez!
Greetings from Colombia, the land of Juan Valdez! 
Colombia es Pasion!

Tigre del Aire

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Photos and text © by Tigre del Aire