Building F-RSIN's 1/144 Dassault Mercure
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History
Many times we read in magazines and on the online boards the question,
"Why doesn't somebody make a kit of [insert obscure subject here]?" Fortunately
for we hobbyists, there are a few people who act on their desires for
kits of obscure subjects. As a result, we're blessed with kits and conversions
for aircraft we'd never get from mainstream manufacturers. With the Internet,
it's easier to make the modeling community aware of these wares. It's
also easier for you to buy them, since many of them offer online ordering
and payment.
 One
of the 'cottage manufacturers' that has taken advantage of this new way
of doing business is F-DCAL . F-DCAL
was started by a group of like-minded individuals who make laser-printed
decals for airliner models. They've also introduced a line of resin kits
and conversions under the F-RSIN brand. From F-RSIN we now have kits of
such lesser-represented types as the Nord 262, the Bloch 220 and others;
conversion kits for early Comets, later Caravelles and the Concorde prototype;
and today's subject, the Dassault Mercure in 1:144 scale.
What was the Mercure, you ask? And why does our subject model look
so darn much like a 737? Well, that's because the Mercure was sort of
a French 737, meant to fly short routes. In cooperation with French aviation
authorities, Dassault identified a market for an aircraft to serve routes
of less than 1,500 kilometers. French domestic airline Air Inter needed
an airliner larger than its 99-seat Caravelles to serve internal routes,
and (with encouragement from the French government) chose the Mercure
instead of the Boeing 727. The prototype Mercure first flew in May 1971,
and Air Inter hoped to begin Mercure service in 1973.
 Reality,
however, would be cruel to the Dassault twin-jet. Problems with certification
pushed delivery of the first aircraft to May 1974. By that time, the market
for commercial aircraft had changed. A worldwide fuel crisis made airlines
seek more efficient use of more fuel-efficient aircraft. Worse, the Mercure
was entering a market already dominated by the popular McDonnell-Douglas
DC-9 and Boeing 737-200 aircraft, both of which had established loyal
followings and both of which had longer range than the Mercure. (One period
joke about the Mercure was that its short range would never let it leave
France.) Though Dassault had hoped to deliver the 300th Mercure by 1979,
the orders never materialized. A proposed longer-range Mercure ASMR, powered
by CFM-56 engines, never left the drawing board, and the Mercure program
ended after the production of 12 aircraft.
 In
service, the Mercure was a reliable airplane. Pilots loved it, calling
it ìAir Inter's fighter jetî (comparable to how some airline pilots felt
about the similarly ill-starred Convair 880). But it was an airplane launched
at an unfortunate time. Air Inter would remain the sole operator of the
type, retiring the last of its Mercures in November 1994. Several of them
escaped destruction and now spend their dotage as museum relics.
The Kit
 F-RSIN
has given the airline hobbyist a full 1:144 scale kit of this historically
significant, but mostly forgotten, aircraft. Mastered by Laurent Herjean,
the F-RSIN Mercure consists of 19 resin parts. A decal sheet by F-DCAL
gives options for three Air Inter schemes worn by the Mercure fleet.
(Author's disclosure: The author has known Laurent for several
years and considers him a good friend. The author has also served as
a vendor of F-RSIN and F-DCAL products. The remarks in this article,
however, are those of a modeler who has built airliner models for longer
than she can count, or cares to remember, for that matter.)
 Upon
opening the box, you see that this is a hand-made kit using low-technology
resin casting. That's how you have to view it, as something that won't
be a Tamiyagawa experience. There will be some adventure before you're
done. And the kit is heavy! The fuselage casting is one very solid piece,
with scribed lines indicating nose gear doors. The vertical tail is a
separate part, as are wings and tailplanes; they have basic control surfaces
and flap separation lines scribed in. Wings have flap actuator fairings
molded in, and  locator
tracks for the separate engines. The engine assemblies are two-piece affairs,
with a separate cowl/fan section and a main aft section. Landing gear
is delicately cast in resin, which will cause some problems we'll address
later.
 The
chief shortcoming of this kit, as with many such kits that are cast without
pressure pots, is that several parts have air bubbles or divots caused
by voids in the mold. These seemed to be most prevalent in areas such
as wingtips, trailing edges, inlet lips and the tips of the actuator fairings.
If you've built similar kits before, you know how to address these flaws:
super-glue and accelerator for the pinholes, and epoxy putty for short-shot
fairings and other intricate areas. Some of the leading edges on my kit
looked a little rough, but a little sanding smoothed them right out. You'll
also have to clean up some flash, too. These are hand-made kits, so be
prepared for some work. It's time well-spent, though, because time spent
here saves you work later on.
 Assembly
itself is very straightforward. Once you've cut the parts from their casting
blocks and sanded the surfaces true, you just glue them in their proper
places. Since there are really no positive locators for the flying surfaces,
you must be careful in aligning them, making sure there's even and consistent
dihedral on the wings and stabilizers and making sure the tail is lined
up properly. (Yes, the stabilizers really are angled that way on real
Mercures.) Engines tack in place under the wings, and that's it! now you
fill and sand like any other kit. As with most resin kits, the amount
of joint filling you do will be in inverse proportion to the amount of
sanding and test fitting you do. Parts preparation is vital. For the stuff
that still won't quite snuggle in, Mr. Surfacer and putty will take you
the rest of the way. Fortunately, the parts in my kit seemed to fit well,
and I didn't have to do any more assembly-stage filling than I'd have
to do on a similar injection-molded airliner kit.
 Once
the basic airframe was acceptable, I primed it with Tamiya spray primer.
I love Tamiya's primers because they harden the surface and help prevent
etching where dissimilar materials meet. A white acrylic coat followed
(Floquil Reefer White, with a drop of blue to prevent yellowing), and,
once that set, I masked the white areas and sprayed the belly, wings and
stabilizers with Polly S Light Ghost Gray. When that dried, I masked the
wing and tail surfaces and sprayed the belly, engines and leading edges
with Polly S Aluminum acrylic. Be advised, however, that some Air Inter
schemes offer the option of a gray belly or an aluminum belly. The F-RSIN
and F-DCAL instructions aren't precise on this, so this is where research
will pay off! Many pictures of Air Inter Mercures are available at, among
other places, airliners.net. I brush-painted the hot sections of the engines
with Polly S Oxidized Aluminum for an appropriate ìburnedî look.
After the paint dried, I sprayed the entire airplane with Future before
applying the decals. Your decal options? Well, anything you want so long
as it's Air Inter! (Yes, believe it or not, the Mercure is one of the
few types that companies like Pan Am, which otherwise seemed to have one
of everything, didn't get hold of!)
 F-DCAL's
laser-printed decals are nicely detailed and extremely thin. It's very
easy to make them wrinkle and bubble. They're also translucent, meant
to be placed against a white background. You may be alarmed when they
appear to change colors when you slide them off the backing, but they'll
look normal again once they're in place. (Don't let them overlap, or the
additional color layer will change the decal's color!) They're printed
on a continuous sheet, so it's very important you also trim off all the
excess decal film you can.
Most of all, you also need to be certain you're applying them to an
absolutely glossy finish. Due to the translucent nature of these decals,
silvering becomes even more pronounced and is visible beneath the decals'
color layers. You can apply flat clear coats later, but during decaling,
the model needs to be as glossy as possible. I didn't quite do that, and
you can see several areas of excessive silvering, inconsistent color and
some wrinkling.
 I
encountered no real problems aside from the longer cheatline decals wanting
to wrap around themselves on occasion. I also tore a few of the longer
decals, since they're so thin, and had to patch them. Be careful! The
cockpit windscreen decal will require some finesse; mine didn't want to
quite match the slope of the fuselage shape, so I had to do some judicious
trimming.
For the cheatline-painted version you have choices for early and late
tail logos, with appropriate changes in title and details along the fuselage.
The ìwhite-whaleî final scheme requires you to paint the light-blue wrap
around the rear fuselage. Since I'm lazy (and since I'm not a big fan
of such schemes), I chose the old tail logo. A coat of Future sealed the
decals once they set. Mine wasn't the greatest decaling job in the world,
but with proper preparation and a better gloss coat than mine, the decals
will look just fine.
 The
final details of this kit pose its biggest challenges. The landing gear
is, literally, the weakest part of an otherwise competent kit. There's
no way those delicate resin castings are going to hold up under all that
weight. Reinforcing the nose gear was as simple as drilling a hole through
the strut and gluing in a length of brass wire. The mains, however, were
a little more involved. For those, I cut away the thinnest of the rearmost
struts, which were closest to vertical and closest to bearing the weight
of the model. I rebuilt it with brass wire. I filed a groove in the back
of the assembly so the wire would have a ìnestî and drilled a hole in
the bottom of the gear strut, between the wheel mounting pins. I inserted
the wire and secured it with plenty of super glue. After a little finish
work and some paint, it looks almost as good as the original part. I left
a little stub of wire out the top that fit into a hole drilled in the
gear well; this gave me a pin for mounting the strut.
Last little details remained. You must supply your own antennas and
gear doors, so I made some from styrene card. I also replaced the kit-supplied
main wheels, which looked a little too simplified; my replacements were
from the spares box, and I believe they were copies I cast of L-1011 main
gear wheels. Not necessarily perfect, but it'll do for now. I used the
kit's nose wheels, but since then I think they look a little bit too big.
There's something about the nose gear that makes the model seem a little
huskier than the actual Mercure. Maybe it's just me.
 Otherwise,
the model looks 'right,' with no major problems of shape or symmetry apparent.
And it is heavy! It's also a satisfying project to complete, too, and
keeps my A320 and A321 company atop the display case. The finished model
is about the size of an A320, which somehow seems appropriate, given how
the A320 and its derivatives now fly many routes for which the Mercure
was designed.
Conclusion
Is the F-RSIN Mercure a kit for everybody? Probably not. It's a relatively
expensive kit (with shipping included, it's 36.50 Euros, which as I write
this works out to just under $45 US) of a relatively obscure subject.
It requires some advanced skills to do it justice, most notably in filling
pinholes and otherwise cleaning up the parts. It's not a state-of-the-art
kit, either; you will have to do some sanding, shaping and filling. And,
unless you plan to put your Mercure on a display stand (or unless F-RSIN
soon makes these parts available in white metal), you will have to reinforce
the landing gear. That fix alone puts the kit into the 'advanced modelers
only' category.
However, if you're up to the challenge, and have an interest in the
Mercure, Air Inter or French civil aviation, the F-RSIN kit is worth a
try. It's a good kit, and probably the only way you'll get a decent Mercure
in the established airliner scale without scratchbuilding it yourself.
Better still, it'll get the folks going "hey, what's that?"
at the next contest of club meeting!
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