I’ve always thought that the SEPECAT Jaguar was good looking plane, so I had made up my mind to add one to my collection. I had two different kits that I could choose from at the time, the Italeri offering or the one from Hasegawa. Both have their good points and both have their bad points. Amongst these were cost, quality of detailing (ie. panel lines), ease of construction, weapons choice, and so forth. In the end I settled on the Italeri kit, and to jazz it up a bit more I picked up a set of Eduard photo etched.

Construction started with the cockpit tub. Here I replaced various kit parts with PE where called for and in the process added some much needed detail to front office. Next came the fuselage, which is built up of a number sub-assemblies. The reason for so many fuselage parts (nose cone, cockpit section, main body, and tail) is that Italeri also offer a French Airforce Jaguar A, so some parts are common to both, others obviously not. These sub-assemblies go together well, and for the most part leave a nice panel line behind. The only gaps that required putty were where the wing met the upper portion of the fuselage and around the intake trunks.

The rest of the kit went together easily and quickly, with only basic modeling techniques needed to finish it off. The PE, however, needed some more advanced skills, not surprisingly, but not anything most modelers couldn’t handle. It was quite amazing at how much detail was provided on just one fret of brass. I have already mentioned the cockpit details, which included the seat, panels, and canopy frames. There were also the exterior details that PE is known for, antennas, pitot tubes, landing gear details, and weapons fins. The two parts that I liked most, however, were the brass speed brakes and the burner cans. Because these two items are curved and multi-pieced, they required a bit more care and attention when handling them, but the results are tremendous.

Painting my model was easy because I only needed one colour for the body. I choose to build a Jaguar from the 1991 Gulf War, so all I needed was a single tin of XtraColour RAF Desert Pink. The false canopy was done in flat black, and the burner cans and exhaust areas were finished with MM burnt metal. I further detailed the exhaust areas by dry “rubbing” some gold paint using a Q-tip, and some black dry brushing inside the burner cans themselves. I weathered the whole aircraft by dry brushing spots with grey and green to simulate some wear to the dessert colour, washed the panel lines with burnt umber water colours, and dirtied up the plane with black chalk dust.

I mentioned that I wanted to build a Gulf War Jaguar, and the Italeri kit decals allow you to do that. However, they are not quite accurate (imagine that, kit decals not being 100% correct). Aircraft serials were painted in white on the desert scheme, not black as Italeri suggests, and the rescue markings should be the yellow hi-visibility version. As usual, remember to consult your references. I selected XtraDecal’s Gulf Special #1 to supplement the kit decals. In the end I used the rescue, drop tank and ejection decals from the kit, and individual aircraft markings from the XtraDecal set to create a Jaguar GR.1 of 41(C) Squadron. I was bit disappointed with the XtraDecal nose art as it was not very crisp, slightly out of register, and the small wording like the crew names was not clearly legible, as some other 1/72 decal sets are. This basically forced me to model a Jaguar with simple markings and no nose art. Pity.

The final result is a good looking 1/72 scale fighter. The Jaguar has always had good looking lines, and my model is no exception, if I may say so myself. The photo etched brass then takes the kit one step further and really bring some great details of this kit. With a little patience when tackling some of the fit areas and in dealing with the PE, the Italeri kit will offer up a nice model which should make most any 1/72 scale builder happy.