Desert Storm Tornado

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I've been building this kit at warp speed, well warp speed as compared to my usual build time.

To begin with I got this kit from a friend of mine who bought a collection about two years ago, and near as I can tell this and the others I bought with it had resided in the rafters of a garage for some years, but as the saying goes, "the glory is in the struggle"

The build started out normally, nothing really jumped out at me till I started getting closer to the fuselage going together.

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I started with the wings, three parts each, but the flaps had a nice warp to them and the upper and lower halves had a slight warp as well.

The I got industrious, and decided to pose the speed brakes open (this has since changed to closed) and I hinged them with straight pins....

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And since this going to be a ceiling hanger, everything is up, so the nose and main gear are buttoned up

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I also decided to make the wings moveable, its complicated construction and painting, but my cousins will like it

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Let me just say, this kit is a MONSTER and it has eaten up CA, putty, and Mr. Surfacer like no kit I have ever built.

These are all just pictures of me checking for trouble spots, and there are MANY

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I have sanded, scraped, and filled so much on this kit that see those steps in my sleep

I added a guard over the wing sweep gearing to reduce the chance of the wings popping out of the correct orientation

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Now sometime in the past I lost the kits forward(pilots) instrument panel and had to scratch build a new one.

Once I got to painting I used an RLM semigloss grey for the front office color. I also reinforced the LONG seam on the forward fuselage with styrene stock

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one of our members here donated aircrew for this, and either the kits cockpits are out of scale or theres something wrong somewhere else. It took removing almost a third of the ejection seats volume to get the pilots fitted. But I digress, no one will notice it once its all buttoned up

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Here are a few more of the major assemblies together, just to check progress

Mr. Surfacer is everywhere

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now for the drop tanks, when I say there wasnt an assembly on this model that didnt need filler in some way, I was not exaggerating lol

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next came reinforcing the LONG horizontal fuselage seam

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then came cranking up the Badger, I preshaded with another RLM semigloss brown.

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then the real work started, this kit is a filler sponge..............

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every part of this model has needed filler somewhere, even the parts that you didnt have to cement to another part to form an assembly

This was my biggest worry, the vertical tail, it had me running around looking for creative ways to get it on and solidly attached.

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then came filling the seam at the front of the fin

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then it was on to front end again, the canopy ans windscreen glass were separate pieces from the frames, so I double bubbled them and made one assembly which caused problems later, and I'm slowly working this to a solution

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major assemblies together again

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And the seats and fuselage pylons.

I'm on the final seam work and will hopefully be masking and painting in the next week or so.