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[Finished] 1/48 Revell Tornado IDS to ECR: Lego tiger


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It's going to be even better thanks to you, Lancer!

078_lego_tiger_ecr.png

 

 

 

Thank you Peter. Glad you joined

 

You're right BM, thanks for your comment. I debated that one before painting and to be honest although I knew they are indeed light grey, i decided to paint them white anyway and give them a filter later on. Studying pictures, the difference between the light grey and the dirty white is really not quite striking. So I decided to paint white and tend towards grey at the weathering stages with filters

 

 

Edited by Red Dog
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On 8/15/2017 at 3:55 AM, Red Dog said:

Having had so many issues with the main wheel bay, and complicating the matter even more with 2 different aftermarkets source needing to clear the front fuselage internal size, I decided to be extra careful with the installation of the nose wheel bay from Aires and the cockpit from CMK. The resin pit has about the same height and size overall than the kit's part so no big deal there. But the height of the front wheel bay resin part is a bit 1mm higher than the pit parts. I therefore expected 1mm of conflict that would prevent me to close the fuselage. And indeed it would.

Although the kit's wheelbay doesn't have ceiling details which are moulded on the floor of the cockpit, the resin part does have the top moulded and that's probably the reason why the whole part is higher. You can't thin the top so you can only sand the bottom part by at least 1 mm to ensure a tight fit inside the fuselage with the cockpit. If you don't do that no way you can close the fuselage. Luckily not too many details are lost in the process.

I'm really surprised Q&A guys from so experienced companies in aftermarket can let pass things like that. Or else there was no Q&A at all...

 

019_lego_tiger_front_wheelbay.png

 

 

 

 

Having the 1/72 Aires Pit and wheel bay sets, this problem you are having is exactly the same problem I had with the nose gear bay AND fitting the cockpit into the 72nd Tonka. I don't know if I have a bad sample from Aires or if it was just that poor fitting. Aires has been hit or miss for me. I love the details, but sometimes they are just poor fitting chunks of resin.

Edited by Mr Matt Foley
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Matt,

I could live with that problem because I was making my life complicated myself trying to match two different aftermarket sources.

So I wouldn't have blamed either CMK or Aires for my issue.

But if you had the same kind of problem with two AM kits from the same manufacturer, then that's clearly a lack of QA from them

 

I guess that AM manufacturer need to quickly release stuff after the model has been published and IMHO quality is going down in a general way. 

I saw that from Aires (the main gear bay issue above is incredible) but also from Eduard which always had been flawless for me up yo my B-25 Big Ed with some nasty mistakes in it. I even wrote them but never got an answer. 

In this WIP the thrust reversers PE are not very intuitive, probably wrong and clearly the instructions lacks a lot and confuse more than they help.

I won't spend time to point it out to them since they don't seem to care anyway.

 

Guess it's a price to pay to have AM quickly and be able to build our freshly released models (which almost none of us do anyway) :)

Edited by Red Dog
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I needed to design a couple decals for this build: Mainly the tiger head logo and the web address for the tail. The rest of the decals will be provided by Hahen sheet 48047

The tiger head is yellow and from past experience I know that home printed light colours are too transparent, so It needs a white background. This was painted on the tail using masks:

 

080_lego_tiger_decals.png

 

The decals were printed on a regular home printer with inkjet transparent decal paper, then protected with a coat of gloss (which I always tend to overdo)

 

081_lego_tiger_decal.png

Then applied on the model with just a drop of Microsol

 

The rest will be standard and applied easily ...

 

 

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Thanks guys, all credits go to dnmodels. The masks are so great that it is very easy to make a great and original aircraft. It is the first time i use masks for anything other than serials or insigna, but i am grateful i did not have to do them with tamiya masking tape ! :)

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Well I can understand that Dennis :)

 

I was wondering how to proceed to attach  the slats to the wings. Revell instructions have the hinges and springs glued to the wing first and then present the slats. But I decided to proceed with another method which proved quite easy:

 

1. Glue the hinges to the slats avoiding superglue but slower contact glue

085_lego_tiger_wing.png

 

2. Attach the slat to the wing by inserting the hinges into the wing's holes

086_lego_tiger_wing.png

 

3. then insert the springs in their location

087_lego_tiger_wing.png

 

The flaps were easier than I thought and went in without much of a problem

Here's a view with the full wing, slats and flaps deployed for landing and the spoilers out for braking action:

088_lego_tiger_wing.png

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Some more work on the pit and Werner and Hans

 

089_lego_tiger_cockpit.png

 

Working with PE seatbelts has never been my strong point, especially colored ones. I most of the time revert to  painted lead foil. 

The seat belts are ready to connect to the pilots. No accurate rigging but the effect will be good enough once the pilot are seated.

 

090_lego_tiger_cockpit.png

 

Each time something was added in the pit, I always checked that the canopy remained a tight fit. I've had too many of these surprises.... :)

 

091_lego_tiger_pilot.png

 

After seriously trimming their legs Werner and Hans have been installed in their seat. Werner stay focus on a distant point ahead to keep the aircrfat on the runway and Werner is thrown forward due to the reverse Hans just engaged.

 

The canopy is ready to be closed but not before one last challenge must be mastered, the dreaded det chord...

It's always been where I usually screw up the transparencies. So I decided to try something different and paint it from the inside. It's in relief so it should be easy enough. Unfortunately my brush painting isn't stable enough and screwing it is way too easy, so it's going to be airbrushed

 

Step one, mask the inner canopy and make the line stand out with a pencil. At that point I still wanted to remove the tape and cut it along the drawing on the desk. But then I figured out I'd never be able to have the perfect matching contour.

092_lego_tiger_detchord.png

So  I then ran a toothpick along the edges to make them stand more even more, put a new blade in my X-acto knife and lighltly cut into the tape following the contour as best as I could, and sweat a bit

Airbrush out, light coat of H308 and remove the masking tape. Too bad I can't check from the outside, that will have to wait till the model is finished...

093_lego_tiger_detchord.png

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Next step was decalling.

There's not a lot of decals to apply but they weren't easy to source. 

I finally decided to give a go to a german decal manufacturer I never tried before: Hahen.

They have quite a bit of tornado decals and my choice was Sheet 48047

 

hahen_decals.jpg

The decals are very fine but you have to cut them as close as possible to the artwork, unlike the industrial decals.

That's the same when I do custom homemade decals anyway, so i didn't see the problem

 

But I had some issues with the edge of the decal film not sticking correctly to the model.

To be fair, I often have that with homemade decals too. And I wonder if it's not due to the way I cut the decal and it's support paper. Maybe I bent the decal film too much with scissors?

Anyway these decal film edges gave me trouble because first silvering happens as the decal edge don't stick fully to the model and second when you weather the model the oil wash really makes that edge stand out with oil paint getting underneath and making it impossible to swipe it away. That further enhance the visibility of the decal film.

 

 

095_lego_tiger_decal.png

 

A lot of these decals were removed, trashed and replaced. I usually weather after decalling, and this one was no exception, but I had to trash what was done , weather first and then decal to minimize the visibility of the decal film. In many  cases the kit decals came to the rescue - especially for the maltese cross on the wings

 

Remains the silvering effect that I sometime had. I don't use future but X22 tamiya gloss. Often that is not gloss enough for some decal brand. That's probably the cause of the issue here as well.

 

The last issue with the Hahen offering is that the decals are very thin and suffer from colour difference according to the model paint on the background. 
If you can bypass the fact that the yellow on the german flag seems wrong from real picture references, it's also way too transparent and if placed correctly on the model will stand above a border of grey/orange paint and that will be visible through the flag. Not good! So I had to place the flag higher to ensure I didn't see colour background difference.

094_lego_tiger_decal.png

 

So I have mixed feelings with the Hahen decals, on one hand they were only a few for luftwaffe tornadoes (I searched hard for the wingman offering but they were long OOP) 

but on the other hand the light colours are too transparent (a problem most homemade decals have) 

And I will take responsibility for the bent edge of films and the silvering effect.

 

 

Edited by Red Dog
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Somehow i always use scissors for decals, I either need to change mines or try with a scalpel :)

 

A landing aircraft needs a runway.

Therefore I quickly made a very simple runway base:

 

096_lego_tiger_runway.png

 

the rust oleum texturized paint is just perfect for that. Unfortunately it's becoming very hard to find over here. Glad i bought some spare the last time i could find them :)

it doesn't need to be further painted as it's just perfect for a modern and clean runway (and walkways)

the effect is very convincing. the white line was just masked and painted with Mr surfacer white.

 

097_lego_tiger_runway.png

 

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I'm calling this one finished.

 

I'd like to thank you all for watching.

Thanks Dennis for your help with the ECR bits,

Thanks Mitko for accepting to make the masks for this unpopular luftwaffe and short-lived scheme 

 

Here are the final pictures:

 

098_lego_tiger_final.png

 

099_lego_tiger_final.png

 

100_lego_tiger_final.png

 

102_lego_tiger_final.png

 

103_lego_tiger_final.png

 

104_lego_tiger_final.png

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