R2 - H Typhoon

Past reviews

Step by step......

1. First impressions

A lot of detail provided in the mouldings especially in the guns/ammunition which is going to be difficult to paint at 1:72. My new ‘0’ brush might help here. Good recessing of the panel lines which is helpful for later pin washing.

2. Drills and thrills

I’m surprised this is only a skill level one kit. You have the option to cut out a large section from the wing to reveal the internal machine guns. Guides are provided and in the event I just used a scalpel which, with a bit of wiggling, cut through pretty well.

Yet another opportunity to wreck your model is when mounting the optional rockets.Here the plastic needs to be drilled out. Guide holes are provided and I (lacking a 0.5mm drill) just used the scalpel which gave a fair result but it's easy to go too far, as I have done here.

Cleans up pretty well but some filing and filling will be needed. I’ll try this just using cement and show you the result later.

3. Too much information ?

I've been attempting to paint the pilot and cockpit interior which is tricky at this scale. It's such a shame that you really cannot see any of it in the finished model.

One day when i am rich and famous I will get the Airfix 1:24 - now that is detail.

4. Detail painting

With the pilot now in-situ all the interior detail dissapears from view which is a shame.

I use Selloptape when gluing large surfaces. It's a great help when you need support pressure in several places. Any residue cleans off very well with white spirit.

I tried a scalpel cut strip of masking tape on the rocket heads to add the light green band. This worked fairly well considering this is bog standard cheap tape.

5. Marking out

The detail painting in the wing inspection panel works really well with a touch of brass in the ammo. The silver struts also stand out well against the wing canvas background colour.

This result is about as good as I can achieve with a hand held brush.

Pencilled in the camouflage and then on with a first coat of RAF Green + 10% thinners.

6. Two coats later

For the second coat of green I added about 20% yellow to warm it up. I think this warmer green helps increase the contrast with the mid-tone grey. A lighter shade will also help later with the pin-washing which will tend to darken things down.

I added masking tape to the cockpit in the hope of producing something like straight lines but they are so small its very tricky.

7. Sealed at last

I like to add a coat of satin varnish asap after painting to prevent the enamel surface getting marked or damaged. You can clearly see how this deepens the colours and gives a nice sheen.

I etched in the panel lines again prior to varnishing to make sure they haven't dissapeared too much under the paint. On this model they were still pretty good already.

8. Stuck in a rut

The decals went on pretty well with some tricky one's (see below). This first shot shows the decals after drying. Good, but the panel lines are not visible anymore. I just used a wooden tooth pick to trace over the lines which indented them nicely into the recess.

The softness of the wood is just blunt enough to not rip through the decal. A sciber would work just as well but I don't have one (yet).

PS: Sorry about the change in picture size. I'm gonna use the big ones from now on. You can see a lot more!

9. Where's me specs

The provided decal set is very nice providing two versions, one with invasion stripes, the other without. Some of them are just tiny and difficult to even see. However, as you can see in the cockpit shot, they are perfectly legible, even if you need a magnifying glass to do so. (Just how do you get them the right way up?)

The underwing stripes are quite big and were quite difficult to place. As you can see they have cutaways for the guns and undercarriage. They also need to fold around the wing leading edge. All in all rather tricky.

Some proper decal glue would help here. One for the shopping list.

10. Sticky Business

Adding the wing leading edge yellow decals proved even more tricky. It just would not wrap cleanly around the edges especially as it had to stick on to another decal. (Must get that glue). In the end I gave up and just painted them on. Not as clean but acceptable.

The rockets now needed to be glued on top of the decals. A first for me. Of course the guide holes have now dissapeared behind the decal so not much help. I sliced off the pins on the rocket rails and just stuck them on lining up by eye. This really made a serious mess. The glue dissolved right through the varnish/decal/varnish/paint layers and as I wiggled then into place everything came off. Yuk!!

I'm pleased with the end result all things considered.