Ah, my second favourite time of year (after Eurovision, of course) – French February! Something that started as a bit of a ‘stash clearing’ joke last year, and has now become a set themed month within my modelling year.

This year I decided to tackle my first ever Mach 2 kit. A bold BOLD choice for my first model of the year, and only my second kit within a 10 month period. Yikes. But I decided to go for it and just try and build this remarkable plane in French Aviation history.

I bought this kit at Telford Scale Model World in 2023 for £20.00 alongside some other Mach 2 kits – so I think I got some sort of discount too iirc. Either way it was a relatively okay price for what I’ve seen online.

But when you look inside this box you’ll find barely anything in the box – just 2 sprues, decals, a clear part, and the dread of how much flash and sink marks there are. Oh and the instructions? Yeah you only wanted to have an exploded view right? With really indistinguishable placements? Oh – you didn’t? Well…this is awkward.

Jokes aside the kit is …well it’s kinda one of those situations where it’s “this is your only choice; it is what it is.” If you want something else you’ll need to look at the resin kits…and whilst those are definitely options, they are another skill set compared to this.

Now my airbrush didn’t work very well, so forgive the overall finish that I have for it. But it’s a rather lovely model once it’s settled. It does go together with very little fuss. It’s honestly not very hard to build. There were a few areas of filler – mostly around the wing/tail fuselage joints.

The canopy I overdid it with the manual gloss. As my airbrush was DOA I hand painted the gloss and it wasn’t quite as nice as usual. So I decided to just live with it and clean it up the best I could with a cocktail stick!

To be honest I didn’t do my best job here…but I will say…as a memory to the important stepping stone to jet aircraft for France I’m very happy with it!