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Revell Tornado Gr.4

moon puppy said:
Are you still having fun though? I spent 3 hours yesterday with @iambrb and @errains at the shop just OD on the instrument cluster of the dozer together. And I didn't finish!

I think there's only a few kits I didn't end up buying two of them to get one completed.
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Yessir, I am having fun despite the mistakes. There has been more than one F-bomb dropped LOL. I know the next one will be spectacular!
 
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paddy said:
i have been using amazon more recently

Revell RV03853 Tornado GR.4 Farewell Plastic Model kit, Unpainted : Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games

Revell RV03853 Tornado GR.4 Farewell Plastic Model kit, Unpainted : Amazon.co.uk: Toys & Games
www.amazon.co.uk
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Thanks Paddy! I put on my order from my supplier and it should be here Thursday :)


I have the plane body together. It was definitely a challenging build and I learned a lot along the way.
I have it primed in white at the moment just to get a solid color on it so I can see what needs to be attended to.
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My workspace continues to shrink. I definitely have to do something about that LOL.
 
No pictures (I know, it didn't happen LOL). I filled in several gaps with sprue goo (does anyone else make and use sprue goo? This is my first experience with it). Everything looks much better. I actually took off the rocket mounts from the bottom of the wings since their rotating feature didn't work. Evidently the connecting rod inside the wing that makes them rotate came out of the slots. I will glue them in a fixed position, along with the wings. I sprayed Tamiya Flat Black mixed thinly with alcohol over everything to get a better idea if anything else need attention. I see one spot that needs some putty. I am relatively happy otherwise. I have really enjoyed this airplane. My best friend Ray was in the first Bush's Iraqi war. He was wounded (several times...he is a badass!) and was finally on his third and final wound medivac'd out to be "force" retired. He said while waiting for his flight, the Tornado's would land and take off and were the loudest things he ever heard. He said the F15's, 16s, and other US jets have a "sound", but the Tornado sounds like an Hell has opened up. Cool story. I love hearing his stories when he is willing to tell them. It is one of my greatest honors to be his friend. He was a tank commander and I build his tank with a figure that looked just like him as a Christmas present. Tangent story, his worst wounds came when he had to leave his tank, and was literally lying in the middle of a street on his back and the bullets were flying past overhead and he could hear them zinging. He was like "Well shit. Now what?" After a while he got up and ran to cover and was hit three times, but the badass that he is, he kept fighting. They finally made him get attention, but he said it took several of them to make him stop fighting. Man, can you imagine?! I was researching his tank and read that during WWII the tanks would come back and they would literally hose out the blood from the wounded and dead, then fill it with idiots and send it back out. I was talking to Ray about it and I said, "My God, can you imagine that?". He got quiet for a minute, and said, "I don't have to imagine it". I nearly cried. Ray is my hero. Literally.
 
I have stretched sprue, placed it in a gap or flaw, dabbed it with MEK and schmooshed it into the flaw with a putty shaper before.
It works well. My friend Frank keeps a bottle of dissolving plastic trees. Waste not, want not. His results cannot be disputed.
 
Marbelizing done. I hope this is the right way to do this. I primed with Tamiya Flat Black thinned 50/50. To marbelize the panels I used Tamiya Royal Light Grey mixed 40/60 paint/alcohol. I turned the pressure down to about 13psi, took off the needle guard, and got in close to make the smallest lines I could. Now to spray Tamiya RAF Medium Sea Grey overall in thin, light coats.
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I remember when the Tonka was introduced here the noise was really disappointing after the Lightnings and certainly the UK Phantoms.
The Tonka is loud but a Lightning would vibrate your rib cage :) almost suck your breath out of your lungs., i remember them breaking car windows in the car park at an airshow.
 
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I sprayed Medium Sea Grey 2(RAF) over the whole plane, concentrating on the panel centers as much as I could see them. Next, and I probably didn't need to, I mixed Tamiya Smoke and alcohol to dirty up a few plaves and pick out some panel lines. I went back to the Tam Royal Light Grey mixed a little more thinly and tried to hit the centers to even out any over-splotchyness (yep, I made that word up) and it is coming together.
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I have a major boo boo I hope I can address. If you look behind the swept wing you will notice a large opening. I always thought that was odd. Well, I completely missed a step inserting the pieces that go there, only realizing it when I went back through the instructions looking for paint color instructions. DOH!!! Since this is a trial run for my next one which is going to be amazeballs cool, I may or may not try to put the pieces in. I don't think it will be possible but may see what I can do.
ANYWAY! Next for the paint job I will paint the tail color decorations and exhaust metallics. Then the fun part... weathering!
 
You could get some alignment tabs from outside in, maybe? like put some plasticard on the inside of the opening then clean up the missing part to insert it from the outside, if you follow me.
 
RAF Tonka's could land on a very short runway, they had reverse thrust buckets, thats why the tails were always dirty. Quite uncanny to watch, they would touch down and just stop

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That one is actually on Tarmac, never really sure about field type landings, i saw an RAF Typhoon ( modern) set a field on fire with an afterburner take off once.
 
If you are a stickler for the operational look, the GR's were usually parked with the wings in the forward position. The RAF Tornado's had an extra fuel tank in the vertical tail and with the wings swept aft and fuel in the tail tank, the C of G would move aft of the main gear and they would become tail sitters. The F's didn't have this problem as the longer nose kept the C of G forward of the wheels. The German and Italian Tornados didn't have the extra fuel tank so didn't have the C of G problem and usually parked with wings swept..

Until the Gulf War, the GR squadrons sometimes parked with the flaps and slats in the mid-down position for inspections. If they were left down, they would be raised before loading or unloading wings stores as they interfered with the process. Some squadrons had the tradition of everything up or your wallet would be lightened by a donation to the squadron beer fund. In the Gulf, the sand was getting in the mechanisms and gumming things up when they were left down. Always parking them with with the flaps and slats up fixed that problem. The F squadrons usually favoured flaps and slats raised.

The flaps and slats were interlinked and moved together thru the up/down cycle. Their deployment was also controlled by wing sweep position. The spoilers can only be deployed when the engine is running or with an APU hooked up. Without power or hydraulics they would fail to the closed position.

Cheers,
Rich
 
RichB said:
If you are a stickler for the operational look, the GR's were usually parked with the wings in the forward position. The RAF Tornado's had an extra fuel tank in the vertical tail and with the wings swept aft and fuel in the tail tank, the C of G would move aft of the main gear and they would become tail sitters. The F's didn't have this problem as the longer nose kept the C of G forward of the wheels. The German and Italian Tornados didn't have the extra fuel tank so didn't have the C of G problem and usually parked with wings swept..

Until the Gulf War, the GR squadrons sometimes parked with the flaps and slats in the mid-down position for inspections. If they were left down, they would be raised before loading or unloading wings stores as they interfered with the process. Some squadrons had the tradition of everything up or your wallet would be lightened by a donation to the squadron beer fund. In the Gulf, the sand was getting in the mechanisms and gumming things up when they were left down. Always parking them with with the flaps and slats up fixed that problem. The F squadrons usually favoured flaps and slats raised.

The flaps and slats were interlinked and moved together thru the up/down cycle. Their deployment was also controlled by wing sweep position. The spoilers can only be deployed when the engine is running or with an APU hooked up. Without power or hydraulics they would fail to the closed position.

Cheers,
Rich
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Wow, that is fabulous information. I know VERY little about military anything, even though I was in the U.S Navy,(more than 30 years ago and I don't remember much about it) so I am not a stickler for anything really except a great looking model, but having some sort of accuracy is great when I know it, and now I do. It seems I accidently built the plane correctly LOL. Thank you SO much! I sincerely appreciate that.
 
I dont want to hijack you build thread but it may interest others. this is a fighter version as Rich B says it has a longer nose.

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again with buckets out. Pretty sure i took these at RAF Colitishall in about 2006 , The F3 variant seen here was retired in 2011 and replaced by the Typhoon as the UK primary interceptor.

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A pretty heavy load out on a GR4 , would make a good competition to identify what its carrying. this was probably at Coltishall as well at about the same time as above (Coltishall shut in 2006 as it was the Jaguar base and they were fazed out in 2007).
 
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