1/72 Revell Tornado Gr.1

by Patrick Vossenberg

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Here's my second contribution to ARC, the Revell 1/72 Tornado Gr.1, largely built out-of-the-box. This is really a great Revell kit, with very high levels of detail. The cockpit has very fine raised relief detail on the instrument panels and the tub, and even the seats are pretty good when built from the kit.  I choose however to use the excellent Pavla MB Mk.10A resin seats instead for a try.  The airframe structure has many fine engraved details such as rivets, structures and recessed panel lines.  The exhaust nozzles and landing gears also come with great detail (including molded-on hydraulic lines on the gear struts) and the kit's great decals have a very large collection of markings and stencils.  The only reason for not using these is that I actually wanted to build one of those famous "Operation Granby" desert pink tornados, so I sourced a Hi-Decal sheet to complete the model.  Also included in the kit is a wide variety of nicely detailed weapons and fuel tanks - including the big Hindenburg tanks and RAF LGB's - more than enough for one aircraft and a lot more for the spares box!

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Building this kit is as easy as it can be: I only used a bit of filler in leveling the engine intakes, other than that the kit sees a great fit overall. The kit is well engineered, ensuring good fitting of parts, even though the parts break-down is quite extensive.  Painting the model is quite easy as it all goes in one colour.  This was done by spraying Desert Pink (Humbrol 250) over pre-shaded Black panel lines and relief detail.  The pre-shading - together with a touch of post-shading of specific panels - gives the aircraft a well-used and sun-faded look. The exhaust area was airbrushed with various Humbrol Aluminium and Gun Metal shades.  Decals where next (on an Tamiya acrylic clear gloss layer) - followed by a panel line wash with enamels (a mixture of Burnt Umber/Burnt Sienna).  As mentioned above, I used decals from Hi-Decal which worked out quite well.  I chose to build aircraft ZD739/AC or "Armoured Charmer".  The model is finished with a dull acrylic clear cote.
Patrick 

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Photos and text © b Patrick Vossenbergy