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.  

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.

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?

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

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 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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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