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"Temptress of Tabuk" -Tornado GR.1


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"Temptress of Tabuk"

Foxy Killer

Tornado GR.1 ZA465

 

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Hi everyone!

 

Me again, with yet another Tornado build, I'm afraid.

I'll save the preamble as "Foxy Killer" is certainly one of the more eye-catching Tornado schemes, serving with 16 Sqn in the 1991 Gulf War from Tabuk in Saudi Arabia. Let's get on with it!

 

Kit:

Eduard "Desert Babes" 1:48 Tornado kit (Revell tooling- I'm sure people are familiar with this) (Eduard resin seats/wheels + PE cockpit bits and bobs- no complaints here, all very worthwhile additions). Sidewinders and 1000 lbs bombs were sourced from the stash, I wasn't convinced by the kit's AIM-9s. Also, the gear bays were somewhat sparse, so i populated them with an abundance of wire and plasticard.

 

Decals:

Now, I tried to use the Eduard decals, and for the most part succeeded, but they're unbelievably thin and fragile. After a few breakages I bought a Kits World sheet and finished it off with that. The Eduard decals are of a superior print quality but their fragility lets them down immensely.

 

Paint:

Vallejo Model Air as always, along with some Tamiya clear green for the various lights.

 

Weathering:

I couldn't resist weathering this one up fairly heavily! A base coat of "US Desert Sand", followed by patches of a custom darker brown mix were applied. I tried to clean up a few errors and accidentally created small splodges of excessively dark brown, but this worked to my advantage and they were worked into the scheme ;). Panel line wash was courtesy of UMP's Earth wash. Not satisfied there, I dry-brushed on various shades of brown all over, and used black to represent areas of heavy weathering.

 

More pictures, I say!

 

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Well there we are then, another project draws to a close! Would I recommend this kit? Absolutely, but if you're using the kit decals then you'll want to soak them for longer and bathe them in your favourite decal solution, to prevent ripping.

 

Thanks for dropping by again :)

 

Best wishes,

Sam

Edited by cathasatail
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Fantastic work!

Really great model, and you are a quick builder!!

 

Aren't Eduard specials always Cartograf printed? Those should be close to perfect decals, no???? Never seen britte one as of yet :(

 

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Gosh, thank you everyone for the kind comments! :) it really means a lot!

 

On 6/25/2020 at 7:29 PM, ColinChipmunkfan said:

Hey Sam, this is stunning- both  the detailed modeling and the paint finish.  Love the shot of the nose wheel bay- would have liked to see inside the main gear bay as well. Congratulations on a first class model.

Ask, and you shall receive (although because the lens of my DSLR is physically too big to get close enough, I've had to use a lower quality zoom camera. I hope these are ok!) :

 

 

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(-Apologies about the quality again)

 

 

On 6/26/2020 at 8:15 PM, exdraken said:

Fantastic work!

Really great model, and you are a quick builder!!

 

Aren't Eduard specials always Cartograf printed? Those should be close to perfect decals, no???? Never seen britte one as of yet :(

 

Haha thanks, well for the past month and a bit I've been waiting to find out whether I'd graduated from university (I actually found out 2 days ago, and ended up getting a first). So I've been distracting myself by throwing myself into this build.

I can't recall, but I suspect they probably were courtesy of Cartograf (EDIT: see post #22 below). It might be that I wasn't soaking them for long enough, but I found that upon placing on the surface of the model, the decals just wouldn't "slide" as most other decals I've worked with tend to. The quality is phenomenal, don't get me wrong, but after losing one "Foxy Killer" decal to ripping and folding/curling I was compelled to buy an aftermarket set to finish it off. If you look at the starboard and port views of the nose area, you can see that aftermarket decals were used on the starboard side (evidenced by the reduced intensity of the red lettering).

 

It might have just been my technique, but I can't fault the quality!

 

 

15 hours ago, James G said:

Great job! Are the flaps and slats resin/PE or did you re-work them yourself?

The flaps and slats are all normal kit parts and I haven't changed them one little bit (I gather that the base kit is the Revell IDS one).

 

There's a slight story to me and models with Tornado flaps.... When the Revell IDS kit first came out, I cobbled together one in a German green/black wraparound scheme, but ended up sticking the flaps on upside down.... Skip forward a few years and I repeated the same mistake with a 617Sqn rendition with the same Revell kit, and when I had a pop at the 1:72 Tornado I tried to scratchbuild the flaps with plasticard....

 

Guess what I did wrong...

 

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Yep... I scratchbuilt the flaps the wrong way around because I designed them off of the 1:48 kits I'd built. Whoops!

 

Moral of the story- check your references!

 

Best wishes,

Sam

 

Edited by cathasatail
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On 6/26/2020 at 1:15 PM, exdraken said:

Fantastic work!

Really great model, and you are a quick builder!!

 

Aren't Eduard specials always Cartograf printed? Those should be close to perfect decals, no???? Never seen britte one as of yet :(

 

Not anymore, Eduard has decided to print their own decals. And they have had trouble with some of the Quality in some of the releases. Big mistake IMHO, one of the P-51 releases had a bad batch of decals. And now it sounds as though the Tornado may too.

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