Ron Bell Posted March 24, 2018 Report Share Posted March 24, 2018 This was a relatively simple conversion using the Maintrack Productions conversion, # 72/34. You get a sheet of instructions and a solid resin fuselage with a square hole in it for a cockpit, a prop and an acetate vacu-formed canopy/turtleback. The detail is minimal. The rather prominent exhaust stacks are kind of mushy in appearance, so I replaced them with ones from the spares box. The bottom of the part looked like someone had shot it repeatedly with birdshot, it being covered in small and medium holes. The small ones were too small for putty, so I just tried primer. That filled some, but not all. I then used Tamiya filler/primer and it got most. The larger ones I had to use putty. There were a series of fill, sand, prime, fill more, sand, prime operations, but I still missed a few. Oh well. You use the wings from the Airfix kit, but need to remove the cannon bulges on the top and the bomb racks on the bottom and fill the resulting holes. You also need to fill the holes where the cannons would be mounted as neither of the two prototypes was ever armed. You use the kit's elevators and landing gear, but you are told to make new gear doors from sheet plastic as the ones in the kit are quite thick. You are also advised to box in the open wheel wells. Then you need to cut the canopy to fit, which is tricky as there are no demarcation lines on the part at all. I cut down the kit's pilot and seat to fit so he would fill up some of the space under the canopy as there was nothing else in there. It's a kit of a rare bird that probably would not have done well as the Vulture engine proved itself underpowered and unreliable in other aircraft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ghodges Posted March 24, 2018 Report Share Posted March 24, 2018 That's a new one one me! You can definitely see the resemblance between the two, though the double bank of exhausts give it a very unique look. Nice build Ron! It should be interesting to stand back and see how many "double takes" you get from people passing it on the table. GIL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ralph Nardone Posted March 25, 2018 Report Share Posted March 25, 2018 The Tornado was a parallel project to the Typhoon, with the Tornado using the RR Vulture X-block engine and the Typhoon using the Napier Sabre H-block engine. Both were 24-cylinder liquid cooled powerplants... Nice work, Ron! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Deliduka Posted March 26, 2018 Report Share Posted March 26, 2018 Magnificent job Ron! I never knew about this aircraft, thanks for educating me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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