Model Forum / General / Models / June 2007

Picked one of these up the other day to go into the "build soon" section of
the stash, as I'm trying to work through RAF fighters from Hunter to Typhoon
in 1/48 and it is, as they say, the only game in town. What that means is
that I have Academy's Hunter F6, the Airfix Lightning F2A/ F6 (can't find an
F1/ F3 kit for love nor money) Revell's boxing of the Hase Phantom FGR2, and
an Airfix Tornado F3; if anybody has an Italeri F3 in 1/48 they'd be willing
to part with I'd love to hear from them. So, a mixed bag of dogs and stars
there as any fule kno. Guess what. The Revell Eurofighter is the star of the
show.

Okay, so the Typhoon doesn't have the brute force presence of the Phantom,
the adrenaline fuelled hotrod credentials of the Lightning, it's devoid of
the Hunter's Kate Moss looks and for the time being it can't match the
Tonka's fully paid up membership of the warbird club. None of these things
matter, because Revell have produced an absolutely must have kit here, and
they've done it at a bargain price to boot.

Opening the (crap) box, we have four large sprues of Revell's grey plastic
providing the majority of the kit parts. Two smaller sprues contain some
very finely moulded detail parts and the single seater spine and airbrake. A
further sprue of nicely done clear parts is bagged seperately. Panel lines
are recessed, perhaps a little wide on the fuselage, but bang on the money
everywhere else. Worthy of special mention are the underwing integral flare
dispensers. The cockpit is a little simplified, but there is some nice
raised detail representing controls and instruments, and the HOTAS
controller is very nicely done. Decals are provided for instruments, but
frankly they are best left on the sheet. The ejector seat is made up of six
parts, and with the exception of a moulded on harness, looks superb. Wheel
wells are nicely done too; it won't take a scratch building genius to bring
them up to a very high standard.

Moving on, the undercarriage is very finely moulded, particularly the
maingear retraction arms. Brake detail is included on the mainwheels' inner
faces. The complex intake looks extremely well engineered, and having
dryfiited the parts together I suspect the seamless intake guys are going to
have a very lean time here. No compressor faces are provided, which won't
please the penlight police one bit, so Revell lose a few marks here. At the
hot end of the engines, the afterburners are represented in a very
simplified form. The Eduard etch set goes some way to addressing this, but a
set of resin cans of the quality of, say, the Aries Lightning set would be
ideal.

The kit provides a comprehensive array of weapons and other stores. No,
sorry, I lied; it's bewildering. Just about everything the Typhoon can carry
is represented here. The characteristic 1000L tanks, Meteor BVRAAMs, AIM
9Ls, AIM120s, IRIS-T AAMs, AIM132 ASRAAMs, Storm Shadow  and Taurus
missiles, wingtip chaff/ ECM pods, Luftwaffe recconaisance pod and GBU-24
LGBs are all here and they are done to such a high standard that the weapons
alone justify the price of the kit. The Sidewinders in particular are the
best IM items in this scale I can remember seeing (I'm thinking of buying a
second Typhoon kit just to get another pair of 'winders for my Phantom).

Decals are provided for three RAF machines (3 Sqn, 29(R) Sqn and 17(R) Sqn),
a Luftwaffe machine from JG73, an Austrian AF machine of unidentified unit
(Revell jumping the gun slightly there), an Italian aircraft of 4' Stormo,
and finally a Spanish AF example of Ala. 11. Comprehensive airframe and
stores stencilling is provided, and the decals are printed in perfect
register. A well printed A4 instruction booklet rounds off the package.

Sounds hard to criticize, really. Well, no, it's not. First of all, please
somebody at Revell AG just listen to modellers and stop with that mind
f***ingly stupid "25% hellgrau, seidenmatt, 74% grau, seidenmatt, 1% blau,
matt" nonsense, okay? I mean "1% blau, matt"? Are you having a Steffi Graff?
Just tell us what colour it's supposed to be. That way we spend less money
on AirDoc books and more on your kits. Nobody buys your paint anyway.
Secondly, please stop putting kits in cereal boxes.

Thanks for reading what to many of you is probably old news.

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