Tornado IDS 1/72 Italian (Esci/Italeri)

[bianfuxia]

Hello everyone, 

 

I knew I had a Tornado in my stash! I see that Valkyrie is already doing what I assume is this same kit in a later boxing, but as it's a STGB I guess that's no surprise! 

 

Anyway I think I will do this one in Italian markings:

 

 

Turns out I had started it a long time ago but I didn't do much - my guess is it's well under 25 per cent:

 

 

I'll get started on this in a week or so once a few other errands are dealt with.

 

Looking forward to it!

[Christer A]

Oooh, nice!

A little MW-1 dispenser on the boxart too 😍

[Col.]

Welcome along with this Golden Oldie

 

27 minutes ago, Christer A said:

Oooh, nice!

A little MW-1 dispenser on the boxart too 😍

Certain there's one included in the kit as at least one of my models had it fitted.

[bianfuxia]

42 minutes ago, Col. said:

Welcome along with this Golden Oldie

 

Certain there's one included in the kit as at least one of my models had it fitted.

Yes there is one - it fell on the floor when I was setting up the pic.

[bianfuxia]

Well, no progress to report other than I have set up my workspace in our new place.

 

I did find the decals for it, along with some other Italian markings that might work as a back-up plan in case the main sheet is no good.

 

 

Also this is what I had previously done on the cockpit - not sure what happened to the decals on the instrument panel.

[bianfuxia]

Some slow progress today.

 

First I discovered that I needed to sand the underside of the wings. I guess when I began this, years ago, I had ambitions to more with it than I now do (my new principle is that undersides face the shelf so they require minimum effort...).

 

anyway I sanded it back so I could paint the wings prior to assembly to avoid any messy effort to paint the parts that are exposed or hidden depending on wing sweep.

 

Then I installed the cockpit, messing it up first time:

 

And re-doing it after removing some of the nose weight so that the cabin floor fitted properly:

 

This is the ballast I used. It's heaps.

 

 

Since these pics I have also masked and painted the bottom fuselage with Tamiya XF-16 flat aluminium and experimented with greys and greens for the camo. Actually the engraved lines on this old kit are really nice. I don't know (or mind) if it is especially accurate - it looks like an IDS to me - but I'll be interested to see whether it builds well once I get started on real construction.

[Jabba]

An old kit coming along well.

[bianfuxia]

A little further along now. I did some experiments with the colours for the camouflage. I am trying very hard to reduce my modelling spend this year having bought a truckload of stuff just before I left the USA - kits are way more expensive in Australia than there - so I have decided for this old kit to just mix paint for the green and use a near-enough dark grey. A bit of online research showed me it was hard to specifically nail down what colour the Italian IDS was and as this kit's configuration is seemingly a bit speculative anyway, and I don't even know if the decals will work, well, suffice to say it's "close enough for government work".

 

In this pic it looks like maybe it could be a little darker, but I put this down as the first coat and will do another.

 

Meanwhile I also completed the underside paint in Tamiya XF-16 flat aluminium. Subject to how things go I might do a few panels a different shade or something but we'll see. 

 

Next step next time is to put the fuselage together. I imagine then I will face a decent amount of sanding...

 

 

[bianfuxia]

Well, we now have an airframe. I was honestly surprised how cleanly it went together, although there will definitely be some putty and sanding in the next step.

 

the paint on the tail is wrong - I stupidly painted from the RAF variant on the instructions before realizing what I'd done. So that has to be fixed.

 

 

 

[bianfuxia]

A little further progress. The intakes aren't as bad as you'd think for this kit. The only thing I had to do was remove that small triangle on the inboard part. It completely didn't fit at all - no way on Earth was it ever going to fit. You know those geometry sets you get your kids, with two triangular set squares (or whatever they are? One's an isoceles triangle and the other a right angle triangle (or whatever - I can barely add much less remember the terminology though I was great at technical drawing, hahaha)? The triangles are never going to match. Well, same with these two parts so I just cut it off. Upper one shows the triangle shape that doesn't match the inner triangle shape of the intake part; bottom one shows the part with the offending triangle removed. Once done the intake went together nicely and fits quite well onto the square part you could see in the previous pictures were it not covered in yellow tape and which I painted black before adding the intake.

 

 

And I puttied up the joins which also weren't as bad as I was expecting.

 

 

I've already sanded it down (no photo yet) so we are moving along. 

 

Now I am really sad (well, relatively so) that I can't find my Italeri Tornado ECR kit. Same kit basically but different decals and two HARMs.

 

Over the years it's apparently been lost despite me searching all the possible places I could have stashed it. Too bad I guess.

 

 

Edited October 25, 2020 by bianfuxia
typo

[Col.]

Your paint mix certainly looks good and the grey has a nice purple tint to it.

[Jabba]

Coming along well.

[bianfuxia]

On 10/26/2020 at 6:13 PM, Jabba said:

Coming along well.

thanks!

 

Made some more progress in the last few days. I did a little more sanding to tidy up the seams, and I have completed the grey now (done after these pics were taken, so the grey you see is not the final coat). The green you see in the second photo is not the final colour - it's just a coat to put the darker mix on top of.

 

After that I'm suddenly in the home stretch.

 

Now comes the armament question. I already decided I'm going to do the kit's cover art build of eight Mk 82s, even though I can't find much/any evidence this was ever a legit loadout for an Italian Tornado. But it looks cool and I am not buying aftermarket bombs for it. Second though, the kit comes with two of the one kind of pod (either boz or phimat?) but none of the other kind (ie, you normally see Tornado with one of each kind and this kit has two of one kind and none of the other kind). Also it has no fuel tanks and the ones I found in my spares department really don't seem right. 

 

Not sure how to resolve that yet, unless I go for a load of four Kormorans, perhaps.

 

 

[Col.]

If you're going with such an early test scheme you can justify hanging anything off it or nothing at all  

[bianfuxia]

53 minutes ago, Col. said:

If you're going with such an early test scheme you can justify hanging anything off it or nothing at all  

Yep - I'll play hardball and say the onus is on the doubter to prove I'm wrong, not on me to prove I'm right 😆

[bianfuxia]

Moving right along, I am now calling the camo done.

 

That was RLM green believe it or not, mixed with a good amount of black.

 

 

This wikipedia picture shows roughly where I'm headed - the tanks I found in my stash are near enough to the ones on this:

 

 

Still a fair way to go but I'm getting there...

[bianfuxia]

Today I tidied up a few things - mainly adding the undercarriage legs and doing some touch up paint. I need to fix the silver bottom where the masking bled a little and also where I managed to smudge green in two spots. The green I mixed has dried up so I am using a slightly darker green on the two tanks because I forgot to paint them when I had the chance.

 

Now just the radome, the exhaust area, wheels and then decals...

 

 

[bianfuxia]

I'm going to start the decals next time I work on this.

 

One thing I realized tonight is that modern jets don't have enough cool black radomes any more. There's something about a green-grey jet with a big black radome that's just way cooler than a grey grey jet with a grey nose. 

 

 

[bianfuxia]

Test run with the old Italeri decals. They are ok! The big red fin flash ripped but I was able to get it together. They are very reluctant to move on the painted surface even with a lot of water so I will need to be a little more careful with the rest.

 

 

The next pics I show of this will be when it's completed, as what remains is pretty minimal really.

[bianfuxia]

Well, I said the next pics would be of the finished model but of course that was too ambitious. The decals are taking a long time - mainly because I've had actual life things to attend to but also because the Italian Tornado has all these markings all over the wings and upper body. They're easy enough to do, but slow and therefore time consuming. This is where I am up to so far - the blob of liquid is still-drying Mr Mark Softer on the strip I'd just finished. Each straight line section is a separate decal.

 

 

 

[Colin W]

Slow and steady always wins the race.

This must have been one of the very early Tornado releases so great to see her being finished to a good standard.

 

Colin

[bianfuxia]

On 12/4/2020 at 2:59 AM, Colin W said:

Slow and steady always wins the race.

This must have been one of the very early Tornado releases so great to see her being finished to a good standard.

 

Colin

thanks!

 

I have to say that this stage has been really difficult - the old decals really didn't hold up for the second half of the red markings all over the top there.

 

 

The decals for the entire left side of the fuselage and the left tailplane basically disintegrated so I had to piece it all together in lengths of about 5 mm. It looks pretty rough and will need a lot of touch up paint on the scratches my tweezers made trying to wrangle and cajole those little segments into place.

 

I got it done and from a bit more distance it looks ok - and will look better when I tidy up the scratched paint.

 

But now I understand why I so rarely see Tornados in this old paint scheme - no-one wants to do the decals!

 

What's left on this thing?

- paint the grey on the canopy and stick it on

- do the silver on the main wheel doors and stick them on

- try to put together the stores (given the imminent deadline, this might end up in clean configuration for the gallery...)

[Colin W]

Decals are looking OK so great recovery there.

3 days should be enough to finish. You can have until midnight UK time so theres half of Monday available.

 

Colin

[bianfuxia]

I had a busy weekend and could only get to this at 10pm tonight (my time).

 

I painted the anti-glare nose and added the pitot, which required some surgery to the nose cone. I took a Bullpup missile and converted it into a rough approximation of the BOZ pod, which didn't come in the kit. I put the main wheel doors on, did all the touch-ups to the camo where the decal troubles referred to in my last post had made such a mess. 

 

I also masked and painted the two tanks, also taken from some long-forgotten kit, and put the bombs on their racks and added the canopy.

Then I tried to do the white decal stripes that go on the nose cone and of course they totally disintegrated, and with them my interest in finishing tonight!

 

So I am calling this done. I may add the pylons later (also the nose wheel doors).

 

Just as I was taking the photos my phone died too so I only have two. I will take some more in the morning if I get time.

 

Overall I liked this build although it got frustrating at the end with the decals.

 

Still, it's done - or near enough for government work.

 

After all, most fighter jets aren't quite done when they enter service. At least mine has a radar!

 

 

Another couple of photos in the gallery - thanks for looking!

[Colin W]

Great effort with  pretty poor quality kit. Great to see the Italians represented in the gallery.

 

Colin