I fancied building a Tornado and had this in the stash, how hard could it be?
Best described as a blank canvas, this kit received a full rescribe, extensive scratchbuilding in the cockpit (including almost total rebuild of the seats), a couple of bays opened up, a bit of faffing about in the wheel bays, and flaps and slats dropped. Unusually I went for aftermarket decals, mainly because they were cheap, and found that they had to be individually cut from the sheet which was a bit unexpected. They are quite attractive but the stencils were comically bad, looking like they were done with a blunt felt tip; the kit stencils were crisp but silvered horribly no matter what I did. Overall it wasn't a complex build, just time consuming; as you would expect of an Airfix kit of this generation there was some warpage but nothing that couldn't be dealt with. Annoyingly I managed to cock up the finish coat which is rougher than I would have liked in places, but I was so fagged out by the whole thing by that point I let it go. RBF tags are by Bare Metal Foil co., FOD covers are scratchbuilt.
The aircraft represented is supposed to be a GR1 but somehow an extra bump ended up under the nose; by the time I realised that it shouldn't be there it was too far along to remove without making a mess. The cockpit is also more representational than realistic; I'm not too fussy as long as it more or less looks like the real thing. What I got out of this build was confidence about scratchbuilding; it's good to have a go at something that you are unlikely to make any worse.