The box.........anyone else remember this line of models?

I hinged the speed brakes and am using stright pins for the hinges, just thought the model would look neat with the brakes popped

I'll take some better pictures once I have the chance, other than the aircrew, this is the only real addition I'm making to the kit.

heres the lower fuselage half, since its gear up I had to fill the nose landing gear doors with strip styrene, CA, and Mr. Surfacer. Of all the gear doors the nose was the worst of them, they fit pretty well, but were 1/8 in below the surface of the rest of the fuselage underside.

The wings, these are another monsterous set of parts. The flaps are seperate, were warped, and arent right shape to fill up the trailing edge openings, one side was also misaligned, so lots of filling and sanding...........One of the wings is pretty much finished, but I still have a few low spots to fill after covering the seams with silver paint to bring the blemishes out, I'll take close ups a little later

I'll take some close ups of the massive forward fuselage seams and the work I've done to the ejection seats and post them in a day or two

I have the same kit!  So I'll be watching your build on this to see how she goes together!  I was in Desert Storm and actually had the opportunity to work with the Brits and their beautiful Tornados!  So I had to get this kit when I saw it!  Thanks for posting the pics!  I look forward tot he rest of the build!

Eagle90

This one sounds like a real bear to work on. I'm not sure, but it may be the early ESCI kit of the prototype/pre-production aircraft with updated "Desert Storm" markings. I don't know if the kit was ever updated to GR.1 standards.

Does this kit have that odd, almost-pebbly surface texture like other ESCI kits of that era?

I have the RAF Jaguar from the same line of those kits. I am enjoying watching you wrestle this beast into shape here.

I have either this kit somewhere, started on it and never finished. It was pretty rough as you say though I don't remember a pebbly surface.

Was the Airfix 1/48th Tornado a reboxing of the same kit or a different mold?

Thanks for the compliments fellas, this thing is a BEAST...........

It has NO recessed detail, anywhere........

No, the plastic is pretty well done and not pebbly in texture, reacts well to Testors liquid cement and is so far very easy to sand.

As for its origins, I have no idea wheter its been reboxed by other companies, but its definitley not up to todays standard.

Youre probably right about it being a warmed over model of the prototype, but they didnt even get the fuselage bomb racks right, lol.

made some filling and sanding progress, unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity for photography as of yet.

As far as the progress goes, I made new mounting holes for the tailerons and whittled down their mounting axels to fit the styrene tube I used to make the new mounts. The mold misalignments on the inboard sides of both tailerons have been evened out with the ever present Mr Surfacer 500.

All the low spots on the lower fuselage have been filled with Mr Surfacer  1000 and sanded smooth.

The wings are complete, only thing left to do is even out the trailing edges of both flaps, they too were marred by mold misalignment. I'm also making a guard to insure the wing sweep gears don't become misaligned in the future.

The vertical tail has also been assembled, there were no locator pins for alignment and the left half was slightly warped, so out came the Testors liquid cement, metal spring clips and slow seam work. Even having taken the time to attempt getting the halves aligned left me with much seam work to do and two very large dimples at the base of the tail just above the burner cans.

Pictures to follow tomorrow, by then I should be about a leg up on my homework.  

okay finally, lol

I have made some real progress in the last few weeks, correcting mold misalignments , getting parts together and LOTs of sanding.

Here are the results so far.

This is the upper fuselage assembly with the windscreen, canopy and vertical tail just sitting on it for fit purposes.  

a close up, the canopy and windscreen frames are separate from the clear parts, they are going to be a REAL pain once I get to assembling them.

heres another assembly hic-up, due to the way the fuselage is split, I've had to make spreaders for the lower half and will have to add styrene reinforcements to the halves to get more gluing area once I get to the point that I'm assembling the halves.

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

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