PM 1/72 IAI Nesher

PM 1:72 IAI NESHER

Reviewer: Simon Skinner (rec.models.scale)
Kit Review submitted: 13 May 2004

Aircraft History:

To avoid any vital interruption of warplane deliveries as a result of shifting international sympathies, Israel decided in the mid-1960's to produce an indigenous multi-role fighter derived from the Dassault Mirage III but powered by the GE J79 turbojet. As an interim step, Israel produced the Nesher (Eagle) as an unlicensed copy of the Mirage IIICJ using stocks of the Atar 9 turbojet already in Israel.

The Nesher is similar to the Mirage IIIC in all respects but its use of the Shafrir short-range AAMs in place of the French type's Magic AAMs, and first flew in 1971. Some 40 Neshers had entered service by the time of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, and achieved a 50% combat success rate with the Shafrir. With the arrival of the Kfir, Nesher production was halted after about 60 aircraft, and 26 surplus aircraft were sold to Argentina in 1978 with the designation Dagger. These performed indifferently in the 1982 Falklands War, and was mainly used as top cover for the dedicated attack aircraft such as the A-4 Skyhawk.

As a footnote, there is a fiction novel written by Wilbur Smith which I think is simply called "Mirage" or "Eagles in the Sky" - something along those lines. It follows an Israeli character/spy who goes to France and steals the Mirage plans in order for Israeli to develop the Eagle/their own Mirage. Not a bad read and probably not too far from the truth!

The Kit:

Recently bought out another modeller’s stash and the crumpled box of this kit was amongst them. Not having much previous experience with PM kits, but possessing knowledge of a less than flattering reputation I decided to open it up and build up the kit as a bit of a test out project. From what I understand this kit is actually one of PM’s earliest forays into injection molded plastic which was reissued back in 2000. Thankfully possessing this knowledge that it is a reissued kit, otherwise this kit probably would have put me off PM forever. Inside the box there are 35 light grey injection molded parts, and the old cliché of not knowing where the sprue stops and the parts begin is certainly a worthy one to use in this instance. There is a copiousness of flash that could also be worthy of another cliché, which is enough to fund the molding of a second kit! The sprues are thick, the parts are crude with raised surface detail that will be later sanded off with all the filling work you will be doing. The smaller parts are quite crude and most of the plastic is riddled with sink marks and other mold imperfections. The one piece canopy supplied was included with the parts and was thick, distorted and scratched.

Instructions:

These simply come on one double sided A4 sized sheet with a few assembly steps on one side and the brief history and external marking schemes on the other. Generic painting information is provided.

Construction:

The first thing to do is to carefully wash all the parts as they still have a sickly feeling mold release agent on them. After that, sprue cutters are needed to carefully remove the parts from the sprue followed by an exercise in sculpturing as you remove the flash with a hobby knife. The last stage will be to gently sand all the mating surfaces and repair sink marks. If you are still happy to proceed with the kit then construction can begin.

This begins in the vastly sparsely detailed cockpit with barely anything more than a poor excuse for a seat provided and a very basic floor onto which you have to add in other details such as stick and instrument panel. It does not fit very well into the fuselage half, so time is spent trimming and test fitting until you can achieve a good fit.

Looking ahead in the instructions I noticed the lack of any interior detail such as exhaust cone and intake trunking, which means no blanking plate which therefore means a completely see-through interior from intake to tail. So you will need to blank off the interior (I used some plasticard) before glueing the halves together. Get out all your clamps and rubber bands because the fuselage halves do not stay together very well and you need about four hands to hold everything in place while you affix clamps and get the damn thing to dry together.

The fuselage intakes are so thick they overhang the mating point on the fuselage resulting in a step, so rigorous sanding and filing is needed to thin them down to an acceptable shape. They fit very poorly to the fuselage and need plenty of work to blend them in smoothly. Repeat this whole process for the nose cone and tail fin, all of which needed similar treatment.

The main wings are heavily warped and almost impossible to fit onto the fuselage. Add to this ejector pins and sink marks and you really felt like giving the project away at this point and trying something else. However, I persisted and managed a reasonably good result from a lot of work and effort. Have your tube of filler handy to fill up the trenches afterward.

The canopy is a very poor fit and is so thick that it almost defeats the purpose of being supplied. It has “coke-bottle-bottom” clearness and as a result of being transported around amongst the plastic sprues was heavily scratched. Even a dip in Future does little to bring it up to, ahem, scratch. My best advice if you have managed to get to this point in the kit is to see if there is an aftermarket vacform replacement.

The undercarriage might as well have also not been supplied, it is basic, simplistic, crude and poor fitting. After attempting the undercarriage and finding the task a bit too much of a challenge, I decided to slam the gear doors shut and have a wheels-up model – yes things had been that bad. The gear doors of course don’t fit and are excessively thick, so I am not sure if I really had an easier job in the end of not affixing the undercarriage.

Versions/Decals:

Two Israeli operated Neshers are provided for by the kit, both in similar dark green, dark brown and pale stone camouflage with the signature huge ident black and orange triangles on the wings and tail fin. The decals are surprisingly in very good register and thin, have little carrier film and actually look quite good on paper. They applied okay to the model and settled down with decal setting solution but would not move about once they came into contact with the model’s surface resulting in one or two being ripped. Otherwise they were okay.

Accuracy:

This is probably the most inaccurate Nesher on the market in this scale, not that I have compared it with others, I just found numerous errors such as wing dihedral (probably a result of the warping) and basic shape errors. On top of all this it is heavily underscale, so much so that it is just not acceptable and would be near to 10 feet in real life.

Overall Recommendation:

This is one of PM’s early offerings and considering what you can get nowadays it is a shocker. It embodies all the things that can take the fun out of building kits, most notably through crude moldings, very poor fit and an inaccurate replica at the end. I therefore could not recommend this kit with any conviction and suggest you spend your money elsewhere.

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