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To
me, there is always something fascinating about the “Fin.”
In 1996 I decided to do a superdetailed Tornado, although the project
wasn’t started until 2000. It was
my second attempt to do a superdetailed kit. I got the inspiration from FSM
March 1993 issue on the late Michelle Croquet’s superdetailed 1/32 jets. But
since my scale is 1/72, I decided to do it in this scale.
Since
there were no aftermarket products for the Tornado available here in Jakarta, I
decided to scratchbuild all the necessary details.
All details were mostly constructed from styrene sheets, stretched sprue,
copper wires, etc. Nothing fancy here, just use everyday’s stuff.
I found out that disposable plastic cups were made from the same kind of
styrene that we usually use for modeling, and since the cups are already
cylindrical in shape, proved very useful for making fuselage panels, flaps,
slats, etc.
Construction
was subdivided into 3 main sub-assemblies.
The first one was the wings. The
fowler flaps and the slats were lowered. The wings of Hasegawa’s 1/72 F-111
served as some kind of a guide for the construction of the double-fowler flaps
for the Tornado. The flaps and
slats were scratchbuilt from styrene sheets and the cups.
Both wings were completed in about 2 weeks.
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Now
it was time for the second sub-assembly; the aft fuselage.
I decided to open the engine bay and some panels on the fin itself, the
auxiliary air intakes and to construct the exhaust in reverse position.
All modifications & details were scratchbuilt using the above stuff.
The engine is mostly styrene from plastic cups, plus a lot of stretched
sprue and wires. After the first
attempt was not successful, the second engine is quite acceptable (at least to
my eyes) and painted with various tones of metallic paints.
After all details were completed, the top and bottom fuselage parts were
glued, together with the completed and painted wings.
If you look carefully, you can find some 1/35 tank tracks in this plane.
The
third sub-assembly is the forward fuselage section.
I opened some panels, including the cannon bay.
The 27mm Mauser cannon was made of stretched sprue, while the ammo rounds
were from ammo belt of 1/35 12.7mm machine gun.
The avionic boxes were of styrene sheets, while the oxigen tank was of
plastic BB pellet. The radar dish
was made of styrene. I used dremel
as a lathe to make it. The ejection
seats were detailed with a lot of wires, while seatbelts were made of paper,
including the buckles. The fit of
the forward fuselage halves were quite bad.
Maybe they deformed because I did some cuts here and there.
The refueling probe was scavenged from a Fujimi A-4E/F kit.
Paintings
were done using mostly Humbrol paints (my favourite paints), while decals came
from the kit. It was finally
completed in about 250 hours within 2.5 months period.
References
:
-
Verlinden
Lock-on – Tornado
-
Modern
Fighting Aircraft – Tornado
-
Concord
Publication – Tornado
Iwan
Jakarta,
Indonesia
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