1:72 Mirage 2000N 4-BA 'La Fayette Tail Art' EC 2/4 'La Fayette' 1998

A tail surface as a canvas

The real subject is a Mirage 2000N with the fuselage marking 4-BA of the fighter squadron 2/4 La Fayette, fitted in 1998 with a special painting of the vertical tail surface. The designation La Fayette appears in the name twice on purpose: once as the name of the painting itself, the second time as the nickname of the formation that operated the machine. The two-seat Mirage 2000N was meanwhile a strike type, not a display one, which makes its festive coat an all the less usual phenomenon.

An exception in its block of product numbers

The surrounding numbers from this maker cover almost exclusively single-machine displays and tiger meets on Rafale and F-16 machines. This sheet is the only representative of the Mirage 2000 family in its whole neighborhood and the only machine with a strike mission. Anyone building a collection of French specials by type gets here the missing link between the Mirage generation and the Rafale generation.

The sizes it came out in

The maker issued the same coloring in two sizes, and this item is the smaller of them. For 1:72 that is an advantage: anyone who wants to build this motif does not have to choose between variants. With the other numbers from the neighborhood both sizes usually exist alongside each other.

Building advice

The painting covers a continuous area of the fin, so the decal is large and is easily folded during transfer. It has proved best to slide it from the carrier paper directly onto the model across a damp surface and to hold it with a damp brush. Anyone who wants to make the work easier can divide the large motif with a sharp scalpel along the panel lines.