Construction underway
The cockpit, as usual, is the logical place to start. All of the raised detail was removed from the instrument panel, side consoles and seat ready to accept the Eduard PE. Tamiya XF-19 Light Grey followed a base coat of the same companies S.G. Black before a combination of cyano and Klear was used to fix the PE in place.
The seat was panted with XF-69 NATO Black with the cushions picked out in XF-62 Olive Drab before the addition of the PE harnesses.
I next moved onto the air intake section. This is quite complex and is only really half a job too. The intake trunking ends short at a blank “wall”. I decided that FOD covers would be the way ahead in this area so I just assembled the parts as is with no filling or messing around. We shall cover these FOD guards later on.
Some small bits were added into the fuselage halves, together with some lead shot for nose weight, before putting the complete cockpit in place and buttoning it all up. The fit of the halves is pretty good with no need for filler and I decided to leave off the foreplanes until later on in the build to make painting easier. I had a few issues with the fuselage spine and airbrake area. It would appear that the kit has been designed to have the airbrake posed open as the fit when closed is somewhat off, i.e. it doesn’t fit! To address this and pose the airbrake in the closed position, I pretty much destroyed part 46 (the fuselage spine) by chopping off the forward half and I also sanded a large amount from the inside faces of the airbrake itself. This was all eventually made to fit in the closed position that I desired. The wings assembled without any real issues with just a flooding of liquid cement into the top wing to fuselage join to sort out any gaps.
The wingtip pods were built and fitted, together with various other vents and doors. After the centre seam was removed, the canopy and windscreen were treated to a Klear bath before being masked and fitted in the closed position. The model was now ready for paint.
Painting
I don’t usually prime my models, but this one was a bit of an exception due to some sanding blemishes that I had left behind and were tricky to polish out. Alclad Grey Microfiller and Primer was used to heavily cover the model and fill in a few small gaps that I hadn’t noticed earlier. Once cured, a polish with micromesh followed before I sat back and contemplated my course of action. It was at this point that I became aware of a Typhoon being allocated to the paint shop at RAF Coningsby to have a “D-Day commemorative scheme” applied. I asked the question of the painters and they were most helpful, even though they couldn’t divulge exact details, saying just invasion stripes, yellow outlined side roundels and code letters would be applied. When I informed them of my plan, they expressed their disappointment at not being able to paint the real thing in camouflage due to the very high cost involved in a full respray. I was just happy that they were keeping the real one in plain grey as I wouldn’t be “copying” anything!
I used the Airfix 1:72nd Hawker Typhoon instructions as reference for the camouflage scheme and the actual colours used were Tamiya Acrylics; XF-83 RAF Light Grey for the undersides with XF-81 RAF Dark Green and XF-82 RAF Ocean Grey for the top surfaces. All demarcations were hard and masked with a combination of Tamiya tape and silly putty and some small touch-ups were carried out freehand. I masked and sprayed the yellow leading edge ID panels after the camouflage; the Invasion stripes were done after these. For reference, the stripes on the model are approx 8mm wide and based on the actual RAF Typhoon commemoration scheme. The flying surface leading edges, fin tip, radome and wing tip pods were left in “bare” Barley Grey as these areas wouldn’t be painted on the real aircraft.
Alclad Aqua Gloss varnish sealed the paintjob ready for decals. The roundels were sourced from an Eduard 1:72 Hellcat dual combo kit whilst the code letters came from one of Eduard’s 1:48 Spitfire MK IX kits. These code letters are not representative of any real aircraft ever; they are merely, and quite possibly vainly, my military rank and initials! The fin flash was originally a straight WWII era one but I cut it to shape to fit the fin. Revell’s decals were used for all of the stencilling and these performed flawlessly. They do dry with a matt finish but a good sealing coat of Alclad Aqua Gloss sorted that out and helped to blend them into the paintwork.
At this point it was time to work on the hot end of the model. These areas were masked off and Tamiya SG Black was used as a base for 6 shades of Alclad. Aluminium was the predominant shade for the rear fuselage whilst the Steel was used for the exhaust nozzles. Jet Exhaust and Pale Burnt Metal were used for shading and Hotmetal Sepia and Blue gave the illusion of heat staining. These areas were covered with Vallejo Model Air Satin Varnish at the same time as the rest of the airframe to knock back the high shine to a more realistic and dull tone. Once the exhaust nozzles were complete, I proceeded to fashion some covers for them. Kitchen foil was used to cover and protect the nozzles and I then covered this with several layers of toilet tissue soaked with diluted PVA glue. The glue was thinned with water until it flowed in a way that I wanted. I also incorporated a sagging impression as these covers on the real thing are just nylon bags that are slipped over the openings. Once dry, I trimmed the covers to size and painted them red before using PVA to attach them to the nozzles.
The APU exhaust cover on the port wing root was again kitchen foil but this time it was covered with a single layer of masking tape. I used an oval template to cut the correct shape and then inserted a single piece of fine wire to represent the handle. This was all painted red. The intake covers were a bit trickier. The real thing can either use a large nylon bag or removable plugs. I opted for the latter and some medium density foam was shaped to fit each of the intakes. This was then covered with a layer of masking tape that was sealed with thin cyano before the mandatory red paint was applied. 2 pieces of thin wire were shaped and fitted to each plug to form handles before fitting the plugs in place.
