Revell 1/48 Eurofighter Typhoon

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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Reply to
flak monkey
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You should get up-close and personal with a full scale one sometime...and then see it fly. You'll take back your second paragraph...

Reply to
Rufus

Saw one last Sunday at Cosford. Very nice. Seen them a few times, notably at Farnborough last year all the way through qualification week. Impressive. Like a PRS is impressive, but it don't have the kudos of a '57 Goldtop. Lightnings and Phantoms in full on display mode... now that was something. Still, I'm aware the Typhoon is without a doubt way way more formidable than both put together.

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Reply to
flak monkey

Have to admit that I've seen both the Angels and the T-Birds in F-4s and I do have to say I've never been impressed with anything else since.

Reply to
Rufus

When they can actually get one serviceable...

Reply to
Enzo Matrix

Depends on what you mean by serviceable?

I was at RAF Coningsby last Thursday at the Eurofighter support office which is close to the hangers and flightline.

Saw plenty of Typhoons, at least 5, maybe be up to 10. The RAF were flying them frequently whilst I was there.

There are also a number operating from BAE Systems Warton as an RAF squadron, although they may have been transferred to Coningsby now.

Plenty of F3s around aswell, though they weren't flying anything like as frequently as the Typhoons.

Cheers,

Nigel

Reply to
Nigel Heather the-heathers.co.uk>

That's exactly the point. The OCU formed at the maufacturer's own airfield, a situation which to my knowledge has never before happened with an RAF aircraft. At one point the "Case White" aircraft were so unreliable that they were averaging less than an hour MTBF and the maintenance man-hours required were nearly three times that of the Jaguar, which the Typhoon is intended to replace. My information comes from a friend who was posted to the OCU at the time. The situation seemes to have improved markedly lately, but it was totally unacceptable that the latest combat aircraft for the RAF (which is more than ten years behind schedule already) should have so many problems when introduced to service. My latest information is that the aircraft now requires a similar number of maintenance man-hours as the Jaguar, but requires a far higher level of trade proficiency. Everything that went wrong with the Jaguar could pretty much be fixed with speedtape and green paint, so I have to wonder whether the Typhoon is really the huge advance that it is hyped to be.

Reply to
Enzo Matrix

I don't think the Typhoon was primarily intended to replace the Jaguar?

Jaguar started out as a light ground attack/trainer whilst the Typhoon was always intended to be an air superiority fighter. The "swing role" stuff was added during one of the many changes of mind the consortium had. Everyone seems to forget there were significant periods of time during which the programme was stalled for lack of commitment from various politicians, role changes from various customers, etc. Oh yes, and it's primary role of shooting down swarms of MiGs went away in 1989. Of course, after all the criticism of the ADV the RAF were still going to make sure they got a "proper" fighter, even though the opportunity to ever use one has probably passed?

I seem to remember Case White was completed ahead of schedule, which suggests that serviceability wasn't a big issue. Colleagues actually working with the jet say it's very serviceable, and they certainly seem to be flying them a lot! Haven't had any feedback from Conningsby yet.

Probably best not to believe all the hype, good or bad.

Enzo Matrix wrote:

Reply to
Eddie Bermuda

Reply to
Eddie Bermuda

They generally bring two at a time into my back yard, and other than a blown main tire (tyre?..) on one occasion, they seem to be pretty servicable to me.

Reply to
Rufus

We used to chase Harriers with an F-4 on occasion...the F-4 had to be in min burner to keep up with a Harrier in the climb...

...and that was a -406 engined Harrier.

Reply to
Rufus

....ahhhh...the calamity of consortium...

Reply to
Rufus

No, it was intended to create an illusion of european unity whilst at the same time preserving jobs in politically marginal constituencies!

Don't be so sure of that. Many of the NATO deployments I've seen recently in eastern europe appear to be designed to deliberately provoke a hostile Russian response. The powers that be are trying to fight the cold war all over again. Let's face it, it's a damn site easier than fighting Muslim insurgents :o)

(kim)

Reply to
kim

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