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Which 1/48 Tornado is best!


Jason

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Aha!! gosh it seems a while back since the HB Tornado!! All I can say in retrospect is that I've seen built HB models with no mods and they look "OK"

The lovely surface detail compensates for the shape a long way, but if you know what to look for you can see all the shape problems on the kits.

It amazes me no one has done any resin corrections for the HB kit - even some properly angled intakes with some vestigial trunking would help. The nose would need a big old chunk of resin though to make it look OK, and actually what I did isnt too hard - its just very severe looking!!!

Did we mention the wing gloves being too thick on the HB kit too?

cheers

Jonners

who knows - perhaps Kinetic might step in......

Or kitty hawk

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Someone called? :) The section in front of the windshield in the Italeri kit is a little long, and the radome in my kit at least was also slightly larger in diameter than the fuselage. Trimming a few mms (I can't recall the exact measurements at the moment) off the rear of the radome will improve fit as well as looks. Part of the problem is also that the two panel lines in front of the canopy are not in the right place, and that throws out the look somewhat too. As my personal laptop is dead, I can't post pics to show the modifications, but find a good sideview of the Tornado nose and compare.

Another issue with the Italeri Tornado is that the forward fuselage should be slabsided, but the kit is slightly curved. The "cheeks" that house the guns should be more pronounced - the first is a job for the file, the second is a job for Milliput and plastic tube. Still, the Italeri kit captures the shapes of the Tornado a lot better than the Hobbyboss kit...

Jens

PS: If you're bringing a Tornado with you, I may try and find my kit in the loft if you want to have a look at the modifications and post them here. My workbench looks a bit like an Eagle's nest at the moment, so that wil be my focus for the weekend...

I think I may well bring a Tonka along! Regarding the slab-sided nature of the real thing, Italeri's F3 is little better than Hobby bosses kit! I haven't compared the HB and Italeri IDS/GR1 kits with each other, but I'll take your word for it! I'd have maybe thought a wedge in the lower fuselage (like wot Jonners did) may be a better fix....though I did that on my F3 - sometimes their ain't enough modelling hours in a day!!

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The fuselage sides are curved in the plan view, and if you look at the panel lines for the access panels on the forward fuselage, the look pretty flat to me. A wedge in the nose won't really solve that problem, so bring a coarse file too:)

Jens

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  • 2 months later...

Hi, I know this post is rather old by now and you probably saw it elsewere: Revell is going to release a new tool Tornado in October this year. Retail in Germany is 24,90 Euro... Let's keep fingers crossed that Revell will finally bring us the 1-48 Tornado many of us are looking for (including GR versions). And for such a price :-)

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I think it makes sense to wait for what Revell will bring out here. I was just about to buy an Italeri Tornado last week to cross it with the HB I already have (including full set of Eduard... pity), when I heard of Revell. What keeps me thinking is the announced parts count of Revell (see their website) - it is significantly lower than the Hobby Boss kit and this somehow worries me a little.

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Two similar threads going on here, but Bill Clark has just pointed out in the 'New 1/48 Tornado IDS from Revell' thread that the Revell part count is actually pretty reasonable when compared to the Italeri kit as well as the HB kit.

Bill said;

"The HB kit is somewhat over engineered - IMHO -hence the high parts count! Interestingly the Italeri GR1/IDS kit 'only' has 117(or thereabouts - don't ask - though it made a change from counting rivets!!) parts............ "

That makes sense to me and I am pretty confident that the Revell kit will be the king of 48 Tornados. I fancy that they'll do this as well as their Strike Eagle as they'll know that this will be a huge seller if it is well recieived.

But for now it is still Italeri. I've seen many fantastic builds of that kit and that is evidence enough for me that it's pretty good. (But admittedly the odd Paragon resin part can help).

Edited by Filler
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Bill certainly got a point there :-) So hopefully Revell includes extended flaps and slats - it makes such a difference on a finished model in my eyes that I would keep the Hobby Boss as a donor kit for that alone.

Lets hope so,though Tornado's nowadays seem to have them deployed less.....Having said that the slats and flaps in the Hobbyboss offering are at best 'representative' rather than accurate...

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  • 3 months later...

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