1/48 Revell Tornado IDS to ECR: Lego bomber – Part 1: Assembly

Since the 1/48 Revell Tornado IDS came out I wanted to build one but not that unique (and ugly) paint scheme included in the box. I personally am not fond of the special paints of the Luftwaffe but a couple of them stand out. So I convinced a friend to make masks for the Lego tiger which appeared around 2010-2012 in airshows and particularly the tiger meet of Cambrai (France) which i had the pleasure to attend:

Having build a couple of Tornadoes in 1/32 already, the reason i wanted to do this one is for the possibility to present the model in a reverse thrust situation on landing, a very nice option available straight from the Revell offering:

This is what i want to have in the end, albeit with the Lego tiger paint.

For this project  I will use the following goodies:

• Aires wheel bays
• CMK cockpit
• Eduard exterior PE fret
• Masters pitot
• Brassin wheels
• 2 PJ pilots
• The fox two bible about german Tornadoes
• And of course the newly released DNmodels masks for the Lego tiger

I know I will need to source the Carl Zeiss Flir and the IRLS empty casing that make the ECR different from the IDS, so I’ll be looking for old scrap parts around the web for these or ultimately I’ll scratch them if it comes to that.
One of the challenge, beside the build itself which doesn’t seem simple, will be to open the auxiliary intake side doors. And that is not going to be simple either, I’ll probably have to cheat a bit on that one!

Let’s start by having a closer view of aftermarkets:
Here is a closer view of the CMK cockpit:

I’m not a big fan of prepainted PE for cockpit, i feel it removes the fun of cockpit modelling and it’s usually hard to get a matching paint reference. Beside, the colour used by CMK seems too blue to me. Nevertheless i found a rather decent match with humbrol 175.
The rest of the detail seems fair, not up to Aires standard but the tub consoles are already better than the kit’s.
Matching the CMK cockpit with the Aires nose wheel bay might be fun…

The kit seats looks really nice but quite different from the resin ones included in the CMK kit, which are MB Mk10A and suitable for my ECR project. 

My concern with the kit’s cockpit was more on the size of the rear cockpit IP and most especially the large MFDs quite visible which seems to be underscaled in the kit. that is most noticeable in the central part

The Aires Q&A failure: 
For the record this is the Revell set, not the one made for Hobbyboss:Inside details are gorgeous and the kits comes with new gear doors as wellCompared to the kit’s parts they are a million years better indeed.
The resin wheel bays are also just a bit thicker than the kit’s part so i suspect the top will need to be sanded thinner for a better fit.

The problem is that they don’t fit at all between the intake support braces, the resin parts are too long. See their deformation on the picture above !
Actually the length seems to be correct but it seems Aires forgot one tiny detail:
In the kit’s the verticals front and rear walls of the wheel bay are actually the lower intake support braces which are glued inside the internal fuselage recess for correct positioning. 
But Aires molded the walls as well unlike on the kit’s part. therefore the resin part is too long and doesn’t fit inside the lower intake braces.

Two solutions: cut the lower intake braces to accommodate the resin wheel bay side walls or cut the resin sidewalls away….
One of the two resin side wall has many details on it, the other is blank, so the choice is easy, the blank resin side wall will be cut away and we’ll see how it fits.
With all that stuff going on inside the fuselage, I’m not sure i’m willing to cut the lower intake braces as i’m concerned the intake might not be in their perfect position anymore and create even more fitting issues further in the build…

I cut the rear wall off, sanded the top wall thinner and inserted the resin between the intake braces.

The key word for this build will be dry fit twice, glue once 🙂

Not bad.
No horrible gap as with the Hobbyboss version of the Aires kit, the small misalignment is simply because i haven’t removed the kit’s wheel bay locating line inside the fuselage which conflicts with the larger resin wheelbay.

That’s why dry fit is critical 🙂

Defining the cockpit tub perfect position:

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 about 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 wheel bay 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 there is no way you will be able to close the fuselage. Luckily not too many details will be lost in the process.

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

Another concern of mating the two different origin aftermarket parts is to ensure that the cockpit rests at the right spot on the wheel bay part.
Both have a step and these must be located spot on for the cockpit to be at the right position in the fuselage, but it is not the case with the default step location.
I had to back up the step on the resin pit floor by 2-3 mm to ensure correct placement of the canopy on the nose gear well.

Another reason why the cockpit needs to be precisely placed in the cockpit is that a misaligned cockpit may create critical issues around the three parts junctions at the nose lower fuselage. Any misalignment here will not only create an issue with the nose but more critically for the side aft fuselage parts that will need to be glued later on (around the intakes – which is already a difficult area with this kit).
So that point really needs to be checked for correct alignment before gluing anything.

To help placing the cockpit in the fuselage i then glued some supports from leftover resin parts:

Then the front and aft fuselage be one last time dry fitted :

Two major mistakes in the Revell instructions:

The first one is easily spotted and you can’t actually do as the instructions tell you because luckily the parts have alignment notches preventing that.
Step 15 of the instructions have parts 39 and 40 swapped. They tell you to install part 39 on the left and part 40 on the right but if you do so the pin for the pylon alignment brace are pointing backward while they should be pointing forward.

Here is how Revell wants you to glue them (the nose of the aircraft is on the bottom of the picture):
The picture below illustrates the correct way to do it. Basically the pin for the pylon brace must point forward so part 39 goes on the right side of the fuselage and part 40 must go on the left side of the fuselage: 

The second issue is a lot harder to detect and honestly i almost fell into the trap, it’s relevant to the flaps.

Step 45 tells you to glue part 107 and 108 together and 109 and 106 together for the other wing. First i wouldn’t do that. It’s way easier to build the whole flap, fill that gap between the top and bottom flap part with putty and clean with nail remover while the putty isn’t dry and once the flap is assembled, add the thinner 108/106 pieces which are the Fowler flaps supports.
The issue in the instruction is that they have these Fowler flap supports swapped (108 & 106) at step 45 and if you follow the instructions, you will glue them inverted. I really couldn’t figure it all out until i checked real life pictures of the flaps.

So make sure you glue 107 with 106 and 109 with 108 and not 107 with 108 and 109 with 106 as the faulty instruction suggests.108 and 106 are identified with the red arrows.

So my advice is to:
– build the flaps first with all three pieces (bottom plate + 2 top plates)
– clean that joint between the two top plates
– sort out the Fowler flap extensions making sure that the top part is flat (inner part must be curved).

The relief intake door trap

Let’s focus a bit on the intake relief door. These are the twin doors on the side just aft of the intakes.  As said above, the landing configuration I chose calls for these doors to be open. The problem is that the inner intake duct is quite far from the outer fuselage parts and the duct doors location might not correspond to the engraving of the outer fuselage parts.
I don’t think it is possible to match the opening from the outside fuselage to the inside of the duct. It’s way too much hassle. Therefore I will cheat a bit by duplicating the doors
– The outside doors will be cut from the fuselage and new doors will be glued against the intake duct.
– The inside doors will not be cut from the intake duct but made of the Eduard parts simply glued open inside the intake duct.
That way the doors are visible from the inside and the outside even though they might not match fully, a small caveat I can live with.

At this step in the build process, the idea is to decide how to proceed and make sure nothing is left in the way for the opening of the doors.
I see two ways to proceed:
– Cut the outside fuselage doors before gluing all the intakes parts together
– Glue all the intake parts together and once all assembled and sanded smooth, then cut the intake doors out.
The first solution might sound most elegant but the intake area is a really critical part of the build with a lot of different pieces and will require a lot of sanding regardless of how precise you are with the dry fitting. Considering this I believe it is safer to use the second option, make the surface smooth and then only open the doors.

But to be able to do that, the internal intake brace needs to be cut otherwise they will conflict with the opened door at future stage.  The area marked green need to be removed before the fuselage parts are closed. I left the forward top brace in to provide a strong contact point for the fuselage side.Then the area is roughly cleaned and will be painted black.

The swing wing design

The swing wing design is outstanding and very sturdy. the only part that is so so is the wing gloves that are very flat and would gain benefit from being just a bit more shaped.
I don’t plan on keeping the moveable feature as my model will be landing I need the full forward 25° wing sweep.
Unfortunately the default minimum wing sweep Revell engineered is not 25°.
I measured mine to 28° which is only 3° more than what it should be and my measurement might not be 100% accurate. So is it a critical issue? Probably not.

I debated if i should fix this or not and it’s such an easy fix that I decided to do it anyway. At least the wing will remain just a bit moveable between 25 and 30° (they can’t sweep more aft due to the wing glove part that i purposely did not open to full 68° wing sweep) i will thus be able to adjust that later on.Above is the default Revell position i measured at 28°.

That is the new forward position 25°.

The fix simply implies to cut the forward lip of each wing that block the T shaped wing lock part. That way the wing can sweep just a bit forward than the default position Revell planned.

Just to be sure i wouldn’t have seen through the wings with the new wing position i glued and shaped some resin bits on the wing. But in the end it wasn’t necessary as after placing the wing shoulders, i wouldn’t see the resin but only the plastic. Anyway it was better to be safe than sorry on that one.

Before closing the top fuselage i decided to cut away the top intakes and glue them separately on the intakes sides rather than to have them glued on the top fuselage. that was done to try to decrease the amount of adjustment and sanding required on the side intakes later on.

I also identified two lines that needed to be cut for better fitting of the top fuselage, these two lines are just a bit too long and don’t go fully into the notches. I found that shorthening them just a bit really helps fitting the top fuselage.

The tail

The large tail will be kept separate until the last possible moment. Painting and sub assemblies will be easier. Eduard provides the photoetched flow directors separately and smartly provides a template to glue them at the right position.
Due to future masking operations, i will glue the small tabs later on.

The Revell tail suffers from a fault design forward of the heat exchanger, although it’s barely noticeable from the side, it is quite obvious when viewed from the top:

The bulge ends up rather abruptly well before the front of the tail. That red curve is nowhere on the real jet and as you said it kind of blend in smoothly up to the forward edge of the tail….

As a consequence the forward edge of the fin is actually way too thin and should be much more massive….
One way to solve this would be to reshape the forward part of the fin – it shouldn’t be too hard to do but I’m not sure if it’s worth doing or not as I might actually end up with something asymetrical which would catch eyes more than the revell’s misschapen tail fin. In the end I decided to live with it.

The speedbrakes

The wings being assembled, closing the top fuselage didn’t bring any issue.
When the pilot is using reverse thrust the speedbrakes must be closed otherwise they would probably be ripped out. Unfortunately that means more fitting issues!

Closing the speedbrake need an extra thickness layer for the speedbrakes part to be flush (having the moveable parts lower than the fuselage part is the worse case scenario for controlled sanding)  I used the Eduard PE which provided exactly the thickness required for a better fit.

Don’t dream some sanding is still required, but at least it is now much more controlled.

The intake mess

The next challenge would be the fitting of the intake assembly. I wasn’t particularly excited with the way Revell’s instructions want me to build the intakes. I was really concerned with the massive amount of sanding the sides of the intakes would require. 

So the intakes were assembled on their own- with the ramp fully up as i read these were made unmovable during the service life of the aircraft (like the Kruger flaps).
As explained above the intake trunk received the Eduard PE doors with the kit’s bulges which were glued in the open position thanks to small invisible supports.

Then only were the intakes glued to the fuselage taking care for proper aligning.
Of course no matter how hard I tried, the side of the intakes nevertheless needed a lot of sanding and all details were lost. Sanding happened before gluing the wing gloves into place.

Then I marked the auxiliary intake doors location for removing with the picoti ™technique 🙂

After a bit of cleaning up, the panel lines were rescribed and the side doors opened.

If you look inside the trunk (as showed earlier) you see the Eduard PE aux doors open and when you look from outside you don’t really need inside the trunk anyway

Another big surprise was the fitting of the canopy:
It fits reasonably well and is very tight – which will help using it as masking for the cockpit hole while priming and painting. But the rear hinges fit is horrible and create a huge step with the dorsal spine. Drilling a bit deeper into the inside hinges solved the issue. This is a consequence of using the resin aftermarket cockpit. I’m sure this issue would not happen when using the kit’s cockpit.

Here’s the model before its final coat of Mr Surfacer:

And we’re now ready for painting, concluding part 1.