Hobby Boss 1/72 Rafale C

The Rafale (gust of wind) is a French twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation. Equipped with a wide range of weapons, it is intended to perform air supremacy, interdiction, aerial reconnaissance, ground support, in-depth strike, anti-ship strike and nuclear deterrence missions.

Hobby Boss came in 2009 with the single seater Rafale C, followed one year later by the twin seater Rafale B (previewed by our Editor here) and the navalized Rafale M, periodically reissuing them with the exact same box arts and decals.

The subject kit is the single seater Rafale C, bought from a still going strong Athens hobby shop in 2025. It comes in a relatively small, high quality, top opening box, featuring an attractive box art of an Armee de l'Aire example.

Upon opening the box, I was greeted with no less than 112 light gray styrene parts. Of them the fuselage halves that contain the wings are separately provided, while the rest of the parts are very cleverly arranged in five sprues, of which the three big ones are used in all Rafale versions and the two smaller ones are used in the specific version.

General shapes of parts look correct, with molding being very nice and crisp with minimal flash and nicely engraved panel lines at seemingly correct places. I particularly liked the fact that the complex shaped fuselage is provided as upper and lower half containing the wings, simplifying construction a lot.

Cockpit is well appointed. The instrument panel features some molded on instruments with decals to be applied on top of them. The side consoles are also provided as decals. The ejection seat looks good, but will definitely benefit from adding seat belts.

Landing gear is very well done for the scale and I particularly liked the sidewall wheel detail. The exhaust nozzles are equally well done (a bit more depth wouldn’t hurt), while the intakes feature sufficient depth, but there’s nothing to be attached to their ends (which may be not that obvious once the fuselage is closed). Weapons and external stores are supremely provided in two sprues, covering most, if not all possible configurations.

 Transparencies are sharply molded and crystal clear. Since the Rafale features lightly gold tinted transparencies in real life, it wouldn’t be a bad idea if Hobby Boss molds these transparencies in lightly tinted clear styrene in the future.

Instructions are provided as a 6-page b/w pamphlet, which contains the main construction, a color chart and a sprues diagram, with the marking and painting provided in a separate high quality color sheet. The construction is spread in four main steps, with each step divided in a few substeps. Color callouts are partially given throughout construction, with the rest depicted at the “marking and painting” sheet.

Two identical schemes are provided in overall gray for two Armee de l’Aire birds. Colors are given in Mr Hobby, Vallejo, Model Master, Tamiya and Humbrol codes and also in generic form. Decals are very nicely printed and should work well.

Instructions want you to first assemble the cockpit and attach it from the insides of the top fuselage half. Similarly, the main wheel wells are to be attached to the lower half, with the two halves then joined, trapping the canards between them. Prior to joining the two halves you are supposed to drill out various holes, depending on your chosen stores configuration. No nose weight is mentioned, but I would definitely trap some in the front, just to be safe.

The intakes, top spine, fin, nose bay and nose cone are next attached, followed by various smaller bits like the refuelling probe and elevon actuators. The landing gear can then be attached, followed by the exhausts, the transparencies and the various external stores. Overall complexity looks relatively low, with the expected care required in fighting the spine and nose wheel bay, since they are provided as inserts.

This is yet another very fine 1/72 Hobby Boss product: general shapes of parts look correct, molding is nice and crisp, overall detail level is more than sufficient for the scale, transparencies are well molded and clear and instructions are well done as are the decals.

Out of the box, a very nice and quite accurate Rafale is likely to be built (the kit represents a production airframe, having an edge over other kits that were developed using measurements from pre-production machines). Rightly priced, this is definitely a kit worth tackling.

 
Happy Modeling!

Spiros Pendedekas

Spiros Pendedekas

February 2025

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