It's easy to take mainstream kits for granted. You don't give too much thought to what goes into producing an accurate and high quality model.
Then earlier this year I was asked to build a Hawker Tornado based on the excellent
Hasegawa Typhoon kit, by David Walker, a client and friend of long-standing and I felt quite honoured to be asked to be part of something which was very important to him. David had asked
Ozturk Modelmakers to produce a modified fuselage which would be integrated with the
Hasegawa kit to produce an authentic Tornado. I knew from experience that it would be a lot of work, but I've never let that put me off. I was anxious to produce a good job, so with David's resources and modified parts and some reading round, I did a lot of preparatory work and then set to.
And there was more to do than I had anticipated. The urethane compound used in the conversion parts was good, but very fibrous. This made it hard to rub down and get a smooth finish. The cockpit area needed to be cleared completely of the urethane to get the internal parts to fit. I then discovered that the cockpit was slightly too far forward and the panel lines wouldn't match up. I needed to do some significant alterations to get it to fit in the now larger area I had created - this without damaging the outer skin.
The propeller's spinner came with an extension, making this part bigger. My references showed that if anything, the spinner on the prototype was shorter, so I left this out.
Next came the double exhausts. The Typhoon exhaust slots had been nicely blanked, so after some careful measuring, I drilled into the nose and cleared out some new slots.
As work progressed, I cut off the moulded on cannon fairings and rubbed down the wing leading edge. The cannon bulges in the wings also had to go. All this was replaced by six machine gun ports and the corresponding chutes in the characteristic 'V' shape under the wing.
On test fitting the wings to the fuselage I noted a distinct lack of plastic at the wing roots. Also, with the 'chin' air intake removed, there were some large spaces to be filleted, filled and shaped. Of course, not only do these parts need to fit, they also had to resemble the Tornado prototype. The new air intake now fitted behind the landing gear and also had to be carefully shaped. The Tornado's own intake was surprisingly curvy and the model's urethane intake rubbed down alarmingly fast. But I managed to get it very close to the real thing. Wow, I thought, how arty am I? That thought lasted me about ten seconds and I ploughed on with the job.
The kit came with a replacement canopy which fitted perfectly but didn't look quite right. It was just too flat. I checked the photographic references and felt that the elevated view which presented it as slightly domed was the most authentic. The original kit canopy, once modified, made the perfect alternative. Cutting through the urethane replacement fuselage to fit the 'car door' seemed unnecessarily risky, especially since it was only representative. Could I add engraved panel detail? I had done this earlier to replace some panel lines lost through rubbing down. It was hard to avoid tears and gouges, but I used my artistic skills and was happy with the result. I find panel lines can be an area of contention due to their subjective nature. For me, if it looks right, it is right.
That's the bulk of the build. It was, as they like to say, a 'big ask'. No project like this is without problems. But the bottom line is that the final model looks the way it was intended to, so it's all good. Virtual hats off to Ozturk Models for their contribution, and to David Walker, whose research and references helped me to build him the aircraft he wanted.
