Global Scale Modeller

Hi everyone, here is my entry for this Group Build, it's Revell's 1/48 Single Seater Eurofighter Typhoon.

Hope you can see the date on this photo - 1st May


Box art is nice with some decent photos of the kit detail, though as usual for Revell it's a side-opening box!


Big bag of sprues.


Details look pretty good, although some of the panel lines are perhaps a bit shallow, will cross that bridge when I come to it. Some sprues are still in packets, and i'll open them when I need to.









The main canopy has come loose at some point, and has a nasty mould line down the middle.



Instructions look nice and clear on first inspection.



Decal sheet looks good too, with everything separated into groups so I won't spend forever looking for what I need.



Finally, I will be using an Eduard Zoom PE set for the cockpit, and some aftermarket decals from Xtradecal for the Battle of Britain 75th Anniversary markings.



These markings were used for the 2015 display season to commemorate the anniversary.



Thanks for looking! I've been looking forward to this one!!

Some background on the Eurofighter Typhoon:

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a twin-engine, canard-delta wing, multirole fighter. The Typhoon was designed and is manufactured by a consortium of Alenia Aermacchi (Leonardo since 2017), Airbus Group, and BAE Systems that conducts the majority of the project through a joint holding company, Eurofighter Jagdflugzeug GmbH formed in 1986. NATO Eurofighter and Tornado Management Agency manages the project and is the prime customer.

The aircraft's development effectively began in 1983 with the Future European Fighter Aircraft programme, a multinational collaboration among the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. Disagreements over design authority and operational requirements led France to leave the consortium to develop the Dassault Rafale independently. A technology demonstration aircraft, the British Aerospace EAP, first took flight on 6 August 1986; the first prototype of the finalised Eurofighter made its first flight on 27 March 1994. The aircraft's name, Typhoon, was adopted in September 1998; the first production contracts were also signed that year.

Political issues in the partner nations significantly protracted the Typhoon's development; the sudden end of the Cold War reduced European demand for fighter aircraft, and debate existed over the aircraft's cost and work share. The Typhoon entered operational service in 2003; it has entered service with the air forces of Austria, Italy, Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Saudi Arabia. The air forces of Oman and Kuwait are export customers, bringing the procurement total to 599 aircraft as of 2016.

Deliveries to the RAF started in 2003 to 17(R) Sqn who were based at BAE Systems Warton Aerodrome in Lancashire (alongside the factory where the aircraft were assembled) while detailed development and testing of the aircraft was carried out. Formal activation of the first Typhoon Squadron at RAF Coningsby occurred on the 1st Jul 2005. The aircraft took over responsibility for UK QRA on 29 Jun 2007 and was formally declared as an advanced Air Defence platform on 1 Jan 2008.

The Eurofighter Typhoon is a highly agile aircraft, designed to be a supremely effective dogfighter in combat. Later production aircraft have been increasingly better equipped to undertake air-to-surface strike missions and to be compatible with an increasing number of different armaments and equipment, including Storm Shadow and the RAF's Brimstone. The Typhoon had its combat debut during the 2011 military intervention in Libya with the Royal Air Force and the Italian Air Force, performing aerial reconnaissance and ground-strike missions. The type has also taken primary responsibility for air-defence duties for the majority of customer nations.The Typhoon FGR4 provides the RAF with a highly capable and extremely agile multi-role combat aircraft, capable of being deployed in the full spectrum of air operations, including air policing, peace support and high intensity conflict.







In May 2015, the RAF unveiled at RAF Coningsby, Lincolnshire a Typhoon fighter jet in a Battle of Britain era paint scheme to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the battle and to acknowledge the bravery and sacrifice of those often referred to as “The Few”: the aircrew who took part in the battle.

The Typhoon was also painted with the 249 Squadron identification number of the only Fighter Command pilot awarded a Victoria Cross during the battle: Flight Lieutenant James Brindley Nicolson VC DFC.

I like the BoB colors.

Looking forward to this.

capable of being deployed in the full spectrum of air operations, including air policing, peace support and high intensity conflict.

Don't you love those military euphemisms. Reminds me of my old flight commander who used to say 'Fighting for peace makes as much sense as a statement as f****** for virginity'

Avgas wrote: Wed May 03, 2017 4:09 pm Looking forward to this.

capable of being deployed in the full spectrum of air operations, including air policing, peace support and high intensity conflict.

Don't you love those military euphemisms. Reminds me of my old flight commander who used to say 'Fighting for peace makes as much sense as a statement as f****** for virginity'

The Ministry of Peace would like to remind all citizens that euphemisms engaged in the service of dissent have been designated double plus ungood.

Fighting for peace, how's that working out so far?

Anyway, made a start on the build. Not sure what I think of this styrene, the jury's out!

Started by getting rid of the moulded seatbelts using a scalpel and then some sanding sticks. The moulded ones looked quite good actually, but I would rather use the PE set.






The instructions aren't very clear on the correct alignment of the seat parts, but I test fitted a few times until I was confident, then went in with the Tamiya Extra Thin.




Looks pretty good!

I have the feeling that there will be lots of cool builds in this GB. Another one to follow.

Nice looking kit Rob - are you finishing it as GiNA or one of the kit options?

Tomcat64 wrote: Thu May 04, 2017 10:49 am Nice looking kit Rob - are you finishing it as GiNA or one of the kit options?

I plan on using the GiNA markings. It'll mean not adding any weapons and there won't be a lot of weathering to do, but that should speed up the build at least!

Nice choice mate! Good luck with the build!

Great - looking forward to seeing how it turns out

I made a small amount of progress last night before I realised we have a guest coming for the weekend and I had to get the spare room ready!

First of all I removed the raised detail from the instrument panel and cockpit tub, to make way for the PE detail that will be going on once it's painted. To do this I used a good sharp scalpel to carefully shave off the details very gradually. I will go over this with a rough sanding stick to give the CA glue something to grab onto when I do the PE.







Also test fitted the seat in the cockpit, it's a very tight fit with the control stick column so I had to sand that to make it slightly narrower. Interestingly, the seat isn't supposed to sit flat on the floor like the moulding of it would suggest, it sits in a tilted back position instead. The instructions were very unclear about this!




So that's where I'm at just now.

Thanks for looking!

It's not been the most productive of weekends unfortunately. I planned on getting more bench time but it was far too nice outside!

I did get the main landing gear bay put together.



And the intakes. These come in two parts that leave a join in the worst possible place! I've put some vallejo plastic putty in there and will layer more on to get as smooth a join as possible. Hopefully the thin sanding sticks from Ultimate will get in there.





Sadly not a speck of paint was fired at the cockpit, which is something I really hoped to have done so that I could get started on the PE.

Nice choice for the decal scheme, I actually saw that jet at the Scottish Airshow, it was very, very pretty.

KungFuDrew wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:02 pm Nice choice for the decal scheme, I actually saw that jet at the Scottish Airshow, it was very, very pretty.

Is that the one at East Fortune, or Ayr? I saw it in Ayr, it was actually the first time I had seen a Typhoon in real life too!

Nice start Rob, hope you get those join lines sorted.

I live just 15 minutes up the Road from Fairford so get spoilt with fast jets at RIAT each year

Tomcat64 wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 3:12 pm Nice start Rob, hope you get those join lines sorted.

I live just 15 minutes up the Road from Fairford so get spoilt with fast jets at RIAT each year

I was thinking of going to that sometime! The Scottish International Airshow at Ayr (for some reason not called Ayr Show), which is down the coast from me, is pretty good. It's a two day thing, but nowhere near the scale of the RIAT, and no static display aircraft!

I had an idea this evening...

I always have loads of these wire cable ties lying around because I always think they'll come in useful, and guess what... I'm going to try to use them to add some detail to the main gear bay.

I've stripped the black rubber off some of them so that I'm left with bare wire.




Should be a good diameter for some hydraulics or something!


EDIT: I didn't end up using these for this build, but I'm sure they'll come in useful in the future!

Yesterday I put a bit of paint on the cockpit and instrument panel. I tried to match the colour to the prepainted PE, it's close enough I think. I brush painted it because it'll barely be visible anyway.

This evening I started on the PE, getting the instrument panel and the side panels done. In the past I've found that the metal comes away from the CA glue so this time I slightly roughened the back of each piece to see if that helps.








A small piece of detail came off the right side panel somehow, so I will need to paint it back in.

Bummer about that wayward piece, but this looks sweet!

Great work, shame about the missing piece. Is it just me or does it look like the left hand MFD should be turned 90 degrees anti-clockwise so that it looks like the pilot has been playing Tetris?

Smiffy wrote: Fri May 12, 2017 7:18 am Great work, shame about the missing piece. Is it just me or does it look like the left hand MFD should be turned 90 degrees anti-clockwise so that it looks like the pilot has been playing Tetris?

I never thought of that! I've heard these things are hi-tech, but that's another level!

Nice work on the cockpit!

ElCapitan wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 3:36 pm

Tomcat64 wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 3:12 pm Nice start Rob, hope you get those join lines sorted.

I live just 15 minutes up the Road from Fairford so get spoilt with fast jets at RIAT each year

I was thinking of going to that sometime! The Scottish International Airshow at Ayr (for some reason not called Ayr Show), which is down the coast from me, is pretty good. It's a two day thing, but nowhere near the scale of the RIAT, and no static display aircraft!

It's definitely worth a visit if you can get chance to do it; the static this year is due to include a B-52 and B1-B neither of which we've seen for a few years so hoping they'll let us get up close and personal with these although it'll need a very wide angle lens on the camera!

Great work on the cockpit that's coming along nicely - hope you get the stray piece back where it belongs.

Would be awesome to see either of those aircraft!

It was a small bit of the pre-painted detail that flaked off the PE, but I think I've made an OK job of painting it back in.

I found some time yesterday to get the cockpit finished, starting with the seat - I'm not entirely sure where Eduard got their seat belt colours from, as I've not seen any reference photos that have multi coloured belts! But no matter, on they went anyway.




Then finished small details in the tub and instrument panel, including control stick and throttle. I also put some PVA glue over the screens to simulate glass.






I'm happy with how it looks, but glad that's the fiddliest bit over!

Looking very nice Rob love the cockpit details, looks like a nice kit and the choice of markings will be stunning. Look forward to seeing this develop good luck

ElCapitan wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:15 pm

KungFuDrew wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:02 pm Nice choice for the decal scheme, I actually saw that jet at the Scottish Airshow, it was very, very pretty.

Is that the one at East Fortune, or Ayr? I saw it in Ayr, it was actually the first time I had seen a Typhoon in real life too!

I saw it at Ayr, it was the perfect day for it with the weather (I actually got really badly sunburnt). I managed to get a couple of half decent pics of it



The first time I saw a Typhoon was a year earlier when it had Normandy invasion stripes on, I didn't think it was possible to make a Tiffie look better until I saw the BoB markings!

KungFuDrew wrote: Tue May 16, 2017 12:19 pm

ElCapitan wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:15 pm

KungFuDrew wrote: Mon May 08, 2017 1:02 pm Nice choice for the decal scheme, I actually saw that jet at the Scottish Airshow, it was very, very pretty.

Is that the one at East Fortune, or Ayr? I saw it in Ayr, it was actually the first time I had seen a Typhoon in real life too!

I saw it at Ayr, it was the perfect day for it with the weather (I actually got really badly sunburnt). I managed to get a couple of half decent pics of it

Yes I remember that day, I have a couple of similar photos, and got a touch of sunburn too if I remember correctly! Really looking forward to this year's show.

Had a very productive weekend for the first time in a few months!

It started with a bit of scratch building. The APU exhaust that exits the fuselage at the root of the port wing was lacking in detail. Revell basically just had a shallow indent so I drilled it through and CA glued a small piece of drinking straw to create a more realistic representation.




It's not the neatest job, but I can tidy it up when I am getting ready for paint.

The next job was to join the two fuselage halves together. There is a separate spine piece which will cover most of the join line, which i'm pleased about! The instructions say to fit the movable canards before closing the fuselage, but I will leave them off until it is all painted and then glue them in a fixed position.

Then I added the lower wing section. I have to say the amount of flash on this kit isn't too bad generally, but the wing piece was another story!




The area around the intake will need a bit of work with some filler, the fit isn't good at all. So, i'll look forward to that...




Next was to fit the tops of the wings, and the wingtip pods. A bit of putty will be needed at the wing roots, but nothing major. I also packed the nose cone with split shot and PVA. So here is where I am just now:




Thanks for looking

Looking great can't wait to see more, the cockpit & seat are awesome.

A quick update as I haven't got a lot done recently.

I've been doing some work on the canopy and noticed a problem with the kit design. There's a piece that fits inside the canopy that should lie flat on the deck behind the cockpit when the canopy is in the closed position. Here you can see that the detail on the deck will prevent it from fitting:




So I had to shave off some of the detail - it'll be hidden anyway.






Hopefully I can get a decent amount done over the weekend!

About time I got back to this!

At the weekend I got the canopy masked and fitted in place. I used the pre-cut Eduard masks, and I have to say I thought they would be more accurate and a bit easier to apply! Still, first time using them is about learning I suppose.

20170701_153724 by ElCapitan, on Flickr

Next job will be priming!

Looking forward to seeing this in paint mate!

I didn't know you could peel off the Micro Crystal ??? interesting !

schweinhund227 wrote: Thu Jul 06, 2017 4:31 pm I didn't know you could peel off the Micro Crystal ??? interesting !

Ah, sorry, that's misleading. I used the crystal to attach the canopy. The masking was done using Revell Color Stop.

Hi everyone

Just as I hoped, I managed to get some colour on this over the weekend firstly it was primed with Ultimate black primer before some base colour using Tamiya XF-19 Sky Grey acrylic.

I did a mottle coat over the primer using some slightly lightened XF-19 thinned at a thinner to paint ratio of 2:1 at 10psi. Next was the full coat at 1:1 thinner to paint 20 psi.

I started with the underside as I still haven't decided which method of masking to use for the camo...

Good to see you're still moving this along Rob - looking forward to seeing how you handle the camo up top.

Tomcat64 wrote: Mon Jul 31, 2017 4:10 pm Good to see you're still moving this along Rob - looking forward to seeing how you handle the camo up top.

Thanks Neil, I think I'm going to go with the blu-tac method...

As I hoped, I've managed to get onto the camo already this weekend.

First I marked out the pattern using blu-tac, making sure to remember which side of the intended demarcation line to place it so as not to mess up the balance between the two colours. This took longer than I thought...




Then on went the first colour - in this case Tamiya acrylic XF-52 "Flat Earth". The opacity wasn't what I hoped over the black primer - perhaps grey primer is the way to go in future for this kind of camo.




I'll now reposition the blu-tac once this has fully dried, before fully masking over the brown to avoid overspray when I do the green. Fingers crossed I'll get that done today too!

Green added using Tamiya acrylic XF-61 "Dark Green".




Unfortunately the blu-tac seems to have discoloured the brown a bit, but hopefully it won't be so noticeable once the varnish coats and a bit of weathering have gone on.




Also the green bled under the blu-tac a bit on the tail fin. I'll try to fix that later

Great job with the cockpit and cammo painting!

Keep up the good work


Tommy

ElCapitan wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 3:43 pm
Unfortunately the blu-tac seems to have discoloured the brown a bit, but hopefully it won't be so noticeable once the varnish coats and a bit of weathering have gone on.

Rob,
I have had that happen when I did my bushmaster.
Once clear coated for decalling and the flat coated it does disappear.
I will edit this post and put some photos up when I break my laptop out.... or more likely when I talk myself into getting out of this warm bed to get my laptop

Alright, I cant find photos of the discolouration, i had issues with the tan as well.
Here is how it turn out at the end, there is no weathering on her apart from some panel liner






Hope that helps Rob
(sorry bout spamming your thread with my photos )

Fridgy wrote: Sun Aug 06, 2017 12:07 pm

ElCapitan wrote: Sat Aug 05, 2017 3:43 pm
Unfortunately the blu-tac seems to have discoloured the brown a bit, but hopefully it won't be so noticeable once the varnish coats and a bit of weathering have gone on.

Rob,
I have had that happen when I did my bushmaster.
Once clear coated for decalling and the flat coated it does disappear.
I will edit this post and put some photos up when I break my laptop out.... or more likely when I talk myself into getting out of this warm bed to get my laptop

Alright, I cant find photos of the discolouration, i had issues with the tan as well.
Here is how it turn out at the end, there is no weathering on her apart from some panel liner

Hope that helps Rob
(sorry bout spamming your thread with my photos )

Thanks, that makes me feel much better about it! It turned out great for you, fingers crossed I get the same result!

I've yet to try a real camo scheme, but I can't find fault with this.

Lysus wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2017 3:50 pm I've yet to try a real camo scheme, but I can't find fault with this.

I'm glad you like it. I'm hoping it will all come together quickly from now on - not much time left!

Starts out as a plane and turns into a personnel carrier...weird kit

Ohhhh I get it, don't just skim the photos, Scott, that Fridgy guy is posting his Kangaroo Carrier

Anyhow, great work on the cockpit and seat belts especially.
I was madly surfing to see if you were going to do the camo pattern
That looks super cool. I have a (couple) of F-18A Hornet kits with a similar commemorative camo pattern to build...those are Fridgy's fault as well

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:23 pm
...those are Fridgy's fault as well

See? I'm not the bad guy around here.

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:23 pm Anyhow, great work on the cockpit and seat belts especially.
I was madly surfing to see if you were going to do the camo pattern
That looks super cool. I have a (couple) of F-18A Hornet kits with a similar commemorative camo pattern to build...those are Fridgy's fault as well

Thanks Scott! I couldn't not do the camo, I wanted something a bit different. Did you ever see the EF Typhoon with the invasion stripes?

ElCapitan wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2017 8:51 pm

Twokidsnosleep wrote: Tue Aug 08, 2017 7:23 pm Anyhow, great work on the cockpit and seat belts especially.
I was madly surfing to see if you were going to do the camo pattern
That looks super cool. I have a (couple) of F-18A Hornet kits with a similar commemorative camo pattern to build...those are Fridgy's fault as well

Thanks Scott! I couldn't not do the camo, I wanted something a bit different. Did you ever see the EF Typhoon with the invasion stripes?

LOOOVE the camo looks smoking hot, never seen that Typhoon with Stripes
This is what Fridgy MADE me buy....he is off on a month's paid holiday and it is perfectly allowable to hassle him , btw
At least until he catches me





Do you think I can blame him for the other eight kits I have bought this summer ???
Probably not, those are Lysus' fault