HobbyBoss Tornado IDS

Scale 1:48th
Reviewer: Dave Coward

Initial assessment

The kit comes in a nicely laid out box with a rather colourful picture of a Luftwaffe tornado resplendent in the one of the inclusive decal options.  Upon opening the box you are greeted with a box crammed with sprues of light grey plastic and a side box containing the main fuselage assemblies, the clear parts and the PE parts.  In addition to all this plastic are two sheets of instructions, a two sided colour guide covering both decals options and three decals sheets (one for the German option and RAF option, one for stencilling and one for the weapons).

Initial examination of the sprues shows that parts are flash free and the panel lines are all nicely recessed with some riveting but thankfully the mad riveter has not got to this kit.  The sprues consist of 8 grey plastic containing the airframe parts, 2 clear sprues and a very impressive 10 ordnance and hardpoint sprues. Unfortunately a lot of these weapons are not applicable to either decal option (ALARM and HARM missiles for example) and even less are applicable to the RAF option.  In addition to this observation if you intend to make the RAF version there are no Sky Shadow pods and there are no appropriate weapons for the fuselage hard points. In Hobbyboss`s defence though, the RAF version is a TWCU (Tornado Weapons Conversion Unit) and these were regularly flown in a clean configuration.

Have a look at the range of sprues in this kit by clicking on the thumbnails below.