1/32 Italian Tornado - big red devil

[loftycomfort]

Not only are these Aires jet exhaust the most detailed of their jet resin exhaust sets I've every tried, they are simply resin casting tour de force. For example, instead of asking the user to glue a piece of PE flame holder to the turbine, the whole structure is cast as a single resin piece. Another example, the afterburner + the Tornado thrust reverser + the gears to operate said reverser are again cast as a single piece. I feces you not, when I saw this set in the flesh, my first impression was "that casting looks physically impossible. How'd they do that?"

Each piece in the next four photos are cast as one piece of resin.

The burner cans are glue to the kit's tail. A few difference shades of Alclad were applied. Then some dry brushing to bring out the details.

I also spent time assembly the fuselage. This part of the kit assembles easily and quickly, it's a nice departure from the often over-engineered Trumpeter kits that I've been building. I used the full forward wing seal from TwoMikes. Some dry fitting and resin trimming was needed, but it still works pretty well.

Here's forward fuselage, main fuselage, and the fin. Not glued together yet.

Right now I am working on the paint job on the jet tube interior. Am waiting for the white paint to dry then I will start dirtying it up to simulate the interior griminess.

Cheers,

Terry

Edited July 3, 2011 by loftycomfort

[HOLMES]

impressive to say the least !

[stusbke]

Looking great

I'm now sad that I gut out and added fod covers to mine next one is definitely getting the aires treatment

I just wish they made some wheel bays for this one. The fit of the nose section and aft section to my surprise was really good and needed extra care the fin however was a whole other story but yours seems to be better there as well, could be me though :unsure:

Anyway thanx for the update

Greetz STB

Frederick Jacobs

[dmthamade]

Those are nice looking exhaust systems. Does antone do intakes for this kit yet? One suggestion, and you might have fixed it already. When i did my build, i did wings swept forward too. The over wing fairing needs to be down on the wing surface. I did this by scribing through where the fairing joins the fuselage, clamping and gluing the fairing to the top of the wing. That probably doesn't make sense, some pics to show.

[loftycomfort]

Kind of a mile stone. Now with all major pieces glued together, it is unmistakably a Tornado. Some filler was needed especially on the spine joints.

Those are nice looking exhaust systems. Does antone do intakes for this kit yet? One suggestion, and you might have fixed it already. When i did my build, i did wings swept forward too. The over wing fairing needs to be down on the wing surface. I did this by scribing through where the fairing joins the fuselage, clamping and gluing the fairing to the top of the wing. That probably doesn't make sense, some pics to show.

Don, thanks for the tip. With putty and Mr Surfacer 500, I got that fixed.

And here's the completed exhaust glued to the tail.

I dirtied up the interior exhaust tubes. The base paint was white, then sloppy sprays of Tamiya smoke, brown, and slush washes.

Cheers,

Terry

[Metallicus]

Amazing build!! Great work!!

[loftycomfort]

A minor update.

I cut out some strips from plastic stock to simulate the ribs on the radome.

The kit does not provide this sausage shaped antenna (I believe similar apparatuses are unflatteringly named "donkey d*ldos" on the F-16's), which appears to be unique to the Italian tonkas. I scratch built one with a piece of the kit's sprue.

Not all the sway braces were used on the Italian jets, so the voids on the belly pylons need to be filled with plastic stock (the little white squares).

I also worked on the mundane tasks of building the BOZ pods, the drop tanks, and metal landing gears and the wing pylons. Note that the kit only provides 1x BOZ pod (because the RAF usually carry just one), so I had to steal another one from another Tornado kit because the Italians fly theirs with two.

There is a little more of general construction to be done, then some masking in preparation of painting. I can't wait to start airbrushing this thing, it'll be a lot of fun!

Cheers,

Terry

[josepedro]

Great work!

that´s heading towards a real gem... and a big one!

José

[Marcel111]

Terry,

You Tornado is coming along beautifully! Cockpit and exhasust looks superb!

Marcel

[loftycomfort]

PAINT'S ON! PAINT'S ON! And this is a big update.

I always try to make these big grey jets look more interesting then just acres of grey. So here's my attempt at doing this. Tell me what you think.

I used Mr Surfacer 1000 in a rattle can as primer, good stuff. I also sprayed the metallic areas with Alclad, including the gun ports and refueling probe tip.

The rest of the paint job was all acrylics, mostly Gunze and some Tamiya. Here is the usual pre-shading with black.

The base colour is a custom mix of Gunze H306 (FS36270) and H315 (FS16440). I left the pre-shading very visible. I'll explain.

Then I painted some random panels (with help of masking tape) with H305 (FS36118) and Tamiya Dark Grey XF-24 to highlight panelization.

Then using a finer tip airbrush, I sloppily sprayed on some IJN grey (a very light grey) to simulate the mildly splotty paint job on the Italian jets.

Then finally, I blended everything in with the diluted base colour.

And here are a few close up pics.

I'll wait for the paint to dry, then paint the spine and the tail fin with off-black. More painted pics to show you in the next update.

Cheers,

Terry

[Wolfgun33]

Very nice!! I really like the pre-shading you've done. I'll have to remember that for my builds. Great work so far!

[Sebastijan]

Great job!

One of my photos for inspiration ;)

[loftycomfort]

Minor update.

There are still some other pieces yet to be built and painted (the seats, bombs, and missiles), but the bulk of painting is done. Here is the main airframe sitting on top of the kits I'm comtemplating of building next.

Various undercarriage parts are also painted. The red parts are the avionics access panels.

Next task is to Future everything, then decals. I *can't wait* to put that big red devil graphic on the fin!

Cheers,

Terry

[Marcel111]

Terry, VERY nice paint work, the pre-shading looks excellent!

Marcel

[loftycomfort]

There has been a bit of a minor goof-up.

Throughout the whole build, it never occur to me that I should fill the gaps between the drop tanks and their fins. Now after the tanks are painted and Future'd, I realize I have to do that because they stick out like sore thumbs. Since that part of the tanks are not covered by the wings, they'd be pretty visible on a contest table too, so it's imperative to fill them. First I used alcohol to remove the paint:

Then I flooded the gaps with Mr Surfacer 500.

I will smooth out the Surfacer when it dries, then paint the fins again.

Other than that minor set-back, everything else has been Future'd, and are set aside to cure.

Terry

[Aigore]

Gorgeous work on the tonka! :D

[loftycomfort]

I just made a $30 decaling mistake.

The decal sheets set from Phoenix is well printed, but the decals are *very* thin. They're so thin, I managed to fold one of them to be un-salvagable. The piece I ruined is the number "154" right underneath the red devil. Since it's big and is an italicized number, I can't replace it with generic number decals. I have to order a replacement set from ebay for $30 including shipping. Bugger!!!

Ironically, I applied the much larger red devil pieces on both sides of the fin without folding.

Oh well...

Terry

[update: I just ruined another piece. This time a small stencil. I need to get a bottle of Micro Liquid Decal Film to coat the decals before they are used.]

Edited July 26, 2011 by loftycomfort

[Neo]

another goo trick is to apply a coat of future on the decal sheet let dry then soak them and apply

[loftycomfort]

another goo trick is to apply a coat of future on the decal sheet let dry then soak them and apply

Wouldn't the Future crack when the decal is moved around and flexes?

[Neo]

Wouldn't the Future crack when the decal is moved around and flexes?

I had no issue. I did this for my Iron maden 1/144 painted(hand brush) the hole sheet with future(thin coat). Used the decals couple of weeks later and the worked like a charm with micro Sol and Set

[loftycomfort]

Thanks Neo. I just brushed on some Future on a small decal to test this technique. Will keep you guys posted on the results.

Terry

[Marcel111]

Terry,

The red devil tail looks hot! Wish my Tornado was that far <_<

Marcel

[Wolfgun33]

Really looking good!! Bummer on the decals. I have a Tomcat that has big decals that i'll have to worry about. May try that trick that Neo talked about. Can't wait to see the Tornado done.

[loftycomfort]

Since I ordered the replacement decals set, it means I'll have to wait for it to get here from Taiwan. I'm naturally a very impatient person (boy did I choose the wrong hobby LOL), it bothers me to no end that the model would sit there for weeks and I can't work on it. So I set out to try to fix this with what I have. Like they say, when life throws you lemons, you make setting solution... or something like that.

First I brushed Future on the decals. Like this piece here, it's hard to tell, but the Future is there:

The Future does give the decal the much needed rigidity to prevent it from lumping up, but it also leaves a thick, crusty layer of whitened Future on the surface:

Another very undesirable side effect of brushing future on the decal sheet is it causes the clear carrier film to shrink. Have you ever left a graphic t-shirt in the dryer too long? The t-shirt would have ripples around the graphic because it didn't shrink. That's the way some of the decals look after the Future coating. What's worse is the different types of ink on the decal shrink at different rates. For example, the silver ink in the following piece shrinks very little, but the carrier film is now a size or two smaller. This causes a huge problem when you need to stack multiple decals together to create a multi-colored graphic because now the lines don't align correctly.

Ok back to the crusty white stuff. I soaked Q-tips in Windex to wipe it off.

Here is how the final emblem looks like. It says "25 Years of Tornado", at least that's what I think it says. Am I right, Paolo? I tried my best to align the stack of decals, but it's still not perfect. I really don't know how much of the misalignment was caused by printing errors, and how much was caused by decal shrinkage. It doesn't matter, I have to move on.

As for the piece that I ruined, I decided to make a mask and just airbrushed it:

The ultra-thinness of the decals, the shrinkage, and the low margin of error make applying each piece of decal exponentially harder than it should be. I really didn't anticipate the decaling stage to be this difficult and stressful. Due to these headaches I had, I decided to not apply any more stencils - it simply wouldn't be practical to spend half an hour for every single "NO STEP" piece.

Here is the decaled model:

I'm so glad decaling is over. Next task is to blend in the decals with the diluted airframe grey, then Future again to seal everything in, then a panel line wash.

Cheers,

Terry

[Paolo Maglio]

It says "25 Years of Tornado", at least that's what I think it says. Am I right, Paolo? Terry

Yes, you are correct!

Spendid job on the decals. And perfect painting of the model.

About decals: next time you have to deal with that kind of stuff try to spry a soft coat of Tamiya clear gloss from rattle can. It works much better than Future.

2°Suggestion: when you have Future on decals and/or model: DO NOT USE WARM WATER, Future is very sensitive to hot, so keep your water fresh, well under 30°Celsius.

All the best

Paolo