Decals
Once the finish of the model was achieved, I applied a couple of coats of Johnson’s Klear to the airframe to allow a glossy finish to accept the decals to avoid any silvering and adhesion problems. In hindsight, I do not think I actually applied enough to certain areas as ‘silvering’ appeared on a couple of “no step” decals. I am sure this could easily be solved with a bit of Micro Sol in the decals at a later date. You are given an awful lot of decals to apply to the kit, which were applied with ease, even if it did take a couple of nights to carry out this task. There were no issues with decals tearing whilst being applied and the adhesion was very good too.
I also opted to move away from the standard Revell decals and applied “DXI” from 11 Squadron (the boss’s plane) as this is one of my favorites from the Typhoon Fleet. The decals come courtesy of Two Bobs and were excellent as ever to apply.
Once the decals were applied and allowed to dry, I added another coat of Johnson’s Klear to seal the decals, allowed this to dry and then applied two – three coats of Xtracrylix Varnish. I wanted to apply a satin/matt look, so mixed the two together 50/50 and applied this under a low pressure with the airbrush.
Undercarriage & Applying the Canopy
We are now getting to the latter stages and final touches of the model. I decided to make the rear undercarriage look a little busier by applying 0.3mm lead wire to mimic the various pipes attached to the units. These were gently super glued into place and then strapped in using a thin layer of Tamiya Masking Tape. I hope the detail can be made out from the attached picture and I hope you agree it makes the model look a little more interesting. I chose not to add detail to the undercarriage bays as it would not be seen all that often.
A word of warning about the front undercarriage. The leg that is attached to the wheel is very fragile and any pressure applied to the front of the wheel will snap this with ease and a major flaw of the kit I found this out to my peril as I accidently dropped the model and this snapped, leaving me to “pin” this back by drilling a small hole in the leg and gluing a small metal rod to give it support. Perhaps this is something the aftermarket boys could possibly look into? (Roll on SAC www.scaleaircraftconversions.com/ and their neat white metal undercarriage units!)
After the undercarriage was glued into place, all doors and supports were added and glued into place. At this point, all weapons rails were glued on as well as the control surfaces at the rear of the wing.
The canopy was added to the model and painted black inside the frame to mask the grey off that is shown on the outside of the model. There is a lot of room inside the canopy and I am sure there will be some aftermarket photo etched being released at some point to super detail this, however, I opted to complete the canopy and paint the inside black. This was glued into place with cyno-acrylic glue and left to set for the evening.
Now the model airframe is finished which just leaves me the weapons load out to finish, which will be my next and final step of this kit.
Final Stages – Weapons Load
The weapons load out on the aircraft was split between missiles, which were included within the Revell kit, and aftermarket/donor parts from other manufacturers. I want to start by talking about the kit weapons. I found these to be honest a little disappointing. On inspection, the AMRAAM missile heads are larger than the diameter of the missile and therefore bulge at the front; they also have a nasty sink mark on each head, which will need to be filled in. A lot of work is needed to make these to an acceptable standard so beware. If we also look at the kit AIM-120’s these do not suffer from sink marks but an awful amount of flash around the missile tips and a nice casting link along the spine of the missile. This can be taken care of with a sharp scalpel, but I would not expect to do this especially with a new kit.
Once all the sink marks and flashing were removed, these were painted and decaled. The end results can be seen as follows:
To complete the role as an FGR4 variant, I sourced a couple of GBU-10’s from the Tamiya F-14A Tomcat kit. These are superbly tooled and in contrast to the Revell kit parts, fitted together a treat! These were painted Olive Drab (Tamiya XF-62) & French Blue (Humbrol No. 25) to mimic a practise bomb and then added to the airframe. I also added a little twist to these weapons. As mentioned in the magazine previously, I have included the “Model Makers Kit” approach with some of the weapons here. Check out Here Now (aircraft – accessories) for these superb magnetic weapons pylon attachments. I added two 2mm magnet to the pylons and weapons to ensure that these will be kept in line and have enough power to keep these attached. One note I have to make is that you ensure that you correctly attach the magnets the correct way around to ensure that the polarisation forces them together and not apart before you commit to any superglue! (Not that I found this out!)
The kit was finished off with an Isracast 1:32nd scale Litening Pod. This is a solid resin pod, consisting of three resin parts and a decal set to add to the pod. The original pod is used on an F-16 and you will find that the air intake is on the wrong side for the RAF variant. The easiest way around this is to cut the pod in half with a razor saw and simply glue this the correct way. Please be careful to get the cut straight or your pod will not be straight. I also apply a couple of magnets here to attach the pod in place, after finishing it off in Tamiya XF-24 Dark Grey.
