F-RSIN 1/144
Dassault Mercure |  | Background The Dassault Mercure was a fascinating aircraft, with a fascinating history. It marked Dassault's only entry into the commercial aviation industry, and only operated with Air Inter. Probably the best history I've come across is one written by Alain Mengus at an Air Transport Business website. If you are interested in learning all about this aircraft, I highly recommend reading his article. The Kit  This is the first full kit from F-RSIN, and they definitely picked an interesting subject. I know there are no injection-molded kits of the Mercure in 1/144, so this might be your only option if you wish to build this unique aircraft. The kit is molded in a tan resin, with simple surface detailing and a few pinholes to fill. The fuselage is one solid piece, with positive locating sections for the wings. Scribed lines mark the locations for the stabilizers.
 The wings are nicely done and fit well into the fuselage. Slots in the wings provide a positive location for the engine pylons and should give them their characteristic toe-in appearance. The engines themselves, molded with the pylons, feature separate engine faces and look quite nice. Some sanding on the back end of the engine faces should be all that's needed to get everything looking just right. The stabilizers and vertical fin are also nicely done, and attention to the instructions will be needed to make sure you get the right dihedral for the stabilizers.
Finally, the landing gear, while in resin, looks strong enough to support the finished model. My only concern is with the solid fuselage, as there is no way to affix weights in the nose to make sure it sits on all three gear. If anyone has any good tricks for hollowing out a solid resin fuselage, please let me know.  The decal sheet is large and provides three different Air Inter liveries. The early ones feature a three-color cheatline, while the final livery has a light blue band extending down around the fuselage from the tail logo. The decals are printed by F-DCAL and are done on a laser printer. This means that you'll have to undercoat them with white, but for the Mercure this isn't a problem as none of the decals go down on anything but white anyway.
Conclusion This is a decent kit of this little-known aircraft, and although it will require some work to finish, anyone who has worked with short-run resin kits should have no problems at all. My thanks to F-RSIN for the review sample.
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