1:32 Rafael Python 4/5

Two generations of an Israeli close-combat missile

The set depicts the Python guided missiles from the Rafael arms works. The numerals 4 and 5 in the designation refer to two successive generations. The Four entered service at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s and became known for being able to attack a target far off the axis of flight, that is even an aircraft the pilot sees to the side through the canopy frame. The Five from the start of the millennium added an imaging infrared seeker head and a mode in which the target is acquired only after launch.

Both forms share the body, the motor and the layout of the control surfaces, so one mold can cover them. The distinguishing feature is the nose: the Five has a differently shaped seeker head and is altogether somewhat longer. Anyone building a machine from a particular photograph will determine the generation precisely by the nose of the weapon.

What carries them

The home of both missiles is the Israeli Air Force and its local versions of American fighters, on which close-combat weapons hang on the wingtip pylons. The older generation was also sold abroad and appears under the wings of further types, among them machines of eastern design.

A resin casting can bear finer edges on the fins than injection-molded plastic. Thin surfaces do break under rough handling, though, so they are separated with a sharp knife bit by bit and never twisted.

Painting the external store

Training rounds used to be blue with a white stripe, live rounds gray with colored bands at the seeker head. The bands are done most accurately with narrow masking tape, because a decal breaks up on a rounded thin body.