ESCI 48th scale Tornado, another dinosaur

heres the guard I made for the swing wing gearing.

Heres the back seaters hole…

I believe the seats are out of scale, or the crewman is, but once its all painted and buttoned up, no one is gonna notice lol

and with the canopy closed.

and here are some side views with the major assemblies in place.

I was planning on a few more pictures, but both sets of batteries for my camera died…

So more pictures over the weekend, especially of the preparations I’ve made for the Gawd awful forward fuselage seams…

And a note of thanks to Tim Kidwell for his help in getting this thing set up to post pictures again

Well I started slinging paint today, its the first time my airbrush has been used in more months than I can count. I painted the cockpit section of the forward fuselage, and the tops of the side consoles in both the front and back offices. Also brush painted the instrument panels for both pits and applied their respective panel face decals. I’m glad I had already treated the decals I’m going to use with Microscale liquid decal film, because these decals are OLD. Now as for the interior color, I used some MM RLM 68 Hellgrau I believe, everything else just seemed too dark. I was planning on posting more pictures, BUT my rechargeable batteries for my camera finally gave up the ghost and wont hold a charge anymore and I have to get a new set before I can take any more recent pictures. But progress has been made and the fuselage halves being closed up is very close. More to follow

This looks really good, what airforce are you doing it for? I ask as I am doing the 1/32 revell ecr and I got hold of decals from HaHen they’re absolutely brilliant, and the guy Harold who makes them said if there are any decals at all you want that you cannot get, he can custom make them so long as you send decent photos of the aircraft/scheme you want it’s how I ended up with Marineflienger decals. Looking forward to seeing this finished.

Its going to be the sand pink Desert Storm version, the kit comes with markings for Italy, Saudi Arabia, and the RAF.

The RAF bird is the simplest color scheme, both in colors and weathering, oh and it has a scantily clad lady for nose art lol

I cant wait to see the look on my little cousins faces when I give it to them to hang from their ceiling when its all finished.

Alright, I have made some kind of progress, at least for the speed I usually build.

Yesterday I cranked up the Badger 150 for the first time in so long I don’t even remember when the last time was.

I got the inner wing root areas of both wings, top and bottom sprayed Testors aluminum from the little bottle and dressed up the instrument panel coamings, put the side console decals in their places and did some more parts fitting.

Any way here are some more pictures, enjoy.

First is the aluminum wing pivot areas.

The lower fuselage half since I started painting

three views of the instrument panels, after I got this far I set everything together to have a look and I am certain the cockpit interior is a mix of too large for scale ( panels, openings and consoles) and underscale, the bang seats and possibly the aircrew).

and fuselage halves together

well I made some more progress, the exhausts are ready to paint, the vertical stabilizer is just about ready for filling and sanding(lots of low spots from the plastic being so thick), the belly bomb racks are almost ready for sanding( the centers of each piece shrank out of the molds and had monster ejector pin marks), then they’ll be ready to be corrected to hold four bombs each instead of the kit supplied two.

This kit is going to consume a lot of Mr. Surfacer and putter before I get to the point of painting the camo, which is another sticking point, the chosen color is Desert Pink with a 301XX FS number, I don’t have the number here in front of me to reference, but I have no idea what the color actually is, tomorrow I’ll post the FS number and see if anyone here might know.

Tonight its back to sanding and filling, one things for sure, by the time this build is over, I’ll have a completely new respect for newer kits…

made lots of filling and sanding progress the last few days, and I tracked the color of paint I need for the desert camo scheme. The closest thing to it is ANA 616 Desert Sand, so next time I order parts and supplies I’ll be getting two bottles.

Anyway, here are pictures of all the work…

First is the low spots on the rudder and vertical tail

next is a look at the forward fuselage and some of the grand canyon like seams

here are the major assemblies all heaped together. The wing gloves are going to be major problem areas as far as filling and sanding go.

All the medium grey areas are Mr. Surfacer, the forward fuselage is going to be the worst area for filling, but the up side is there isn’t any kind of detail on that area, so it a fair trade in my opinion.

and heres a look at the overall state of things.

More to follow

PUTTY MONSTER!!! But it looks good so far–can’t wait to see it done. Definitely a character builder.

Calm seas do not a good sailor make… right? Your chugging along nicely here. As far as the RAF sand used, try Testors Flat Tan #1167 from the little square bottle. It is a good match for the color.