Panavia Tornado Gr.4A 1/72 Revell

    When I was choosing the camouflage for the Tornado Gr.4A I had no idea what a whip I had made for myself. Revell’s kit is not as good as it seems. There are also a few things that need to be modified to get the Gr.4A version. So we can not expect a simple and quick build out of the box.

    The Tornado was developed and manufactured by the PANAVIA consortium, which is composed of British Aerospace (UK), Messerschmidtt-Bölkow-Blohm (Germany) and Alenia (Italy). Although the multirole Tornado has not seen many users, it plays a significant role in military aviation. Unfortunately, this fact is not reflected much in the offer of good 72 scale kits. We more or less have a choice between Revell and Hasegawa.

   The Revell mouldings look nice at first glance, but on closer examination we find scratches, defects and also sinks. The quality of the clear parts is very poor and the canopy needs to be re-polished. There is a very nice overview of the differences in the Tornado versions on this page.Tornado variants
   The various Revell reboxes contain different sprues so attention needs to be paid to this. The Revell, like the Hasegawa, ends with the Gr.1 version. The Gr.4A version we can get by modifying the front section of the fuselage. It is enough to fill the cannon muzzle. Rescribe two panels and to add the parts of the FLIR (Forward Looking Infra red) and IRLS (Infra Red Line Scanner) systems. I made both from scratch, but there is now a new conversion set available from Freightdog (72016). Building the Revell kit is not the best either. Fitting, filling and rescribing the panel lines is unavoidable. I tried to proceed it with minimal effort to be able to finish the model in a reasonable time at all. I improved a few things like inner parts of the intakes and the skirt over the gaps where the wing retracts.

   The traditional challenge of modern aircraft is the configuration of various antennas, sensors and position lights. I have added/replaced most of them according to the pictures. The next part is to put armament according to reality. I made this part mostly based on picture too. The purpose of Gr.4A version corresponds to the German ECR version. It means electronic warfare and reconnaissance duty. So I equipped the model with additional drop tanks, BOZ-7 container (Chaff/Flare Dispenser) and Sky Shadow (radar jamming pod to eliminate radar guided anti-aircraft missiles). There is obviously a training missile next to the tanks, but I’m not 100% sure of the identification.

    The marking depicts the Tornado Gr.4A ZA405 of 12th RAF Squadron based at Lossiemouth wearing a nice anniversary livery. The decals are from XTradecal sheet.

    Finally, I’d like to add that I´m building another Tornado from Revell and Hasegawa and I’d say Hasegawa is a bit better choice.

P.S.
I don’t commonly present pictures of the model straight from the front and back. It is an exception here because I like those Tornado´s views and also I would like to demonstrate how difficult it is to manage the geometry of the kit. I know it is not perfect but in this case I consider it to be acceptable. It is very difficult to align everything. The individual parts are glued together at different stages of the build and so it happens that the big fin doesn’t come out 100% even. I discovered this at a time when there was no chance to correct it. I also struggled with the negative wing elevation, which looks different in the pictures each time, once more and sometimes less. Finally, here’s the landing gear assembly. It fits pretty well, but the wheels can’t be set straight due to the weight of the kit. It is needed to adjust the pose. Front landing wheels I tried to fix after taking the photos. Overall, this build took a lot of my energy, but the type is worthy of me to build more Tornadoes and finish the remaining ones.

Note: The text was translated with help of deepl.com translator