Revell | Eurofighter IBR Part 2
Reviewed by Kurt Plummer
The wingtip DASS ECM containers are pickle shaped rather than having a straight cylindrical form with end taper. They are also very bluff without antenna cover panels, nav light bulges or RWR pimples of the real thing. The bulkier TRD pod on the starboard side is also not included, though I believe that quite a few of the prototypes flew with symmetrical DASS installations, even the Luftwaffe production birds are now ‘standardized’ on a full up (external) DASS fit.
The canards are within spec for everything but span which is approximately 4mm too long.
The tail is perhaps the most disappointing of the kit's airfoils as it lacks sectional depth comparable to the other surfaces and is short in chord by nearly 5mm at the trailing edge and about 1.25mm (height) across the top where it is squared off instead of having the rearwards slope of the real jet. Given the notched cutout necessary to fit over the air condition/heat exchanger inlet at the root, you can either face a cut and splice through the middle or losing the rudder with a straight graft of added trailing section chord. So much for recessed lines...
Of more concern is the lack of a bulged root fairing /behind/ the inlet where an exhaust vent and some kind of actuation or comms antenna system is presumably housed. This too has gone through many iterations from the mockup to the production model with a long, blended, ‘panhandle’ fairing being typical of the mockup and the early prototypes while service birds cut this back to just a small angled cutline, meeting the tail surface at a sharp angle.
ORDNANCE/STORES
The ordnance loadout is equally period relative to the time of the early Eurofighter R&D phase in that it includes 4 'Skyflash/Aspide wannabes' with mid-wing controls that are almost the same span as the tail fins (think Sea Sparrow or Sky Guard SAM versions). Aside from the wings, this is actually correct as the original Eurofighter spec called for the SARH weapon to be an alternative option to AMRAAM in the fuselage wells but such capability (along with the tuning feeds) has long since been dropped.
As is typical for the time, fins are molded on opposed body halves with separate units to be glued in place at the orthogonals (along the seam line) after. I have seldom found that this works well as alignment inevitably suffers and (as in this case) there is also a strange tendency to sweep the trailing edges of the controls forward and to put exaggerated 'notches' into LE roots. The 2 AMRAAMs (intended for wing-mounting) are even worse in that the mid-span fins are swept back like the canards of an AIM-9E while the tail controls TEs are swept forward at almost 20`. Basically both BVR weapons are little more than body tube candidates for a complete re-winging as well as requiring the sideducts for their tether antennas and avionics feeds. The 8” Skyflash will need to be converted to S225X (hypothetical dual-pulse LRAAM) or the BVRAAM which has a list diameter of 20cm, with ducts. AMRAAM is a 7” weapon so you would be wise to use the Cutting Edge items if you want to mount AIM-120B or C on the fuselage.
The SRMs are similar to their MRM big brothers in that you get a choice between AIM-9S and AIM-132 for Luftwaffe and RAF aircraft, respectively. Unfortunately, the Sidewinders, while generally good looking for outline and proportional shape have badly distorted rolleron tabs and suffer from a recurrence of the dreaded 'notched LE monster' canards. The latter may also be mispositioned (too far forward) because, if you continue the inboard span down to the body tube, it appears to run the overall canard root-chord shape too close to the tip of the nose. Finally, it should be noted that while German Typhoons continue to fly with the AIM-9S as a captive drill round, their go-to-war weapon is now the IRIS-T whose appearance is somewhat like a miniature ALARM anti-radar missile.
The ASRAAM is more or less decent as it is hard to mess up a simple cylinder with single-sweep tails but the nose taper is closer to that of a 5" Zuni rocket than anything likely to have a seeker in it. Simple sheet fix but /irritating/ because it means chucking the piece in a moto-tool to get a taper and then scribing in the seeker separations before mounting an MV Lens or similar (clear sprue etc.) dome atop the resulting putty+CA+sheeted area with little room for mistakes under paint.
The included wing tanks are more akin to U.S. 610 gallon units as seen on F-15s rather than the blunt but slender, 1,000 liter, 'supersonic' units typical of the Eurofighter carriage on the centerline (Luftwaffe) or on the mid-wing stations (everyone else). Or even the 1,700 liter (small Tornado tanks, shown in bottom photo) 'subsonic' tanks which are the current A2G max-range alternative. Again, this is not a crippling thing (if only because new-not-Hindenburger 2,000 liter class tanks are under design) but it is much more than nuisance as it will almost certainly require a sectioned removal of a large segment of the middle of each half and re-mating the remainder before using epoxy putty or sheet to build up the front end and a similar effort (as well as a third fin) for the diagonally cutoff aft end. There are no tanks that I can think of which will completely replicate the 1,000 liter Eurofighter design, the F-4 370's might come close but would need something similar to the (outline) of a 1/24th P-51 108 Paper Tank to be mounted to the front end.
I am also a bit leery of the underwing mounting locations for the pylons and the shape of the rails themselves. The latter looking an awful lot like F-16 outboard LAU-7 carriers rather than the swept pylon and thicker CRL (Common Rail Launcher) for the ASRAAM or indeed the separate pylon+LAU-129 derivative (thicker, blunter) combination intended for use with the AMRAAM.
DETAILS
There is no PIRATE/EUROFIRST fairing for the forward fuselage. I don't believe Luftwaffe aircraft carry them, even today. Additionally, the IFR probe bulge on the starboard side is shown mounted parallel, ‘wrapping around’ the canopy/windscreen line. This is obviously incorrect.
In theory, the parts could be used for as the basis of for the more modest IFR ‘long door’ bulge but the production birds bulbous, two-door+fairing system would require taking some sprue and shaping it to form. Both reallife installations are canted down towards the tail.
An ECR-90/CAPTOR system is included but the bulkhead has ‘very large grain' details and the planar array standoff on it's gimbal mount is minimalistic at best. Given one almost has to split and insert thicken the nose to provide for the correct silhouette and then /shorten it/ as well, I would not bother. Jet’s which don’t look like they are going 1,000mph, sitting still, are not all that thrilling as ‘maintenance diorama’ birds.
Only two engine exhausts are provided and while separate, they are not able to be integrated with the semi-decent 4 part EJ-200 replica as their 'burner cans’ are mounted on a single piece bulkhead which closes off the end of the fuselage.
Furthermore, as shown above, the nozzles themselves lack the distinctive 'squared off' trapezoidal shape of the highly dilated-when-unpowered EJ-200 exhaust petal segments and are instead integrated into a fixed series of 'facets' with a solid triangular join in between. I'm afraid here you are either going to have to settle for a TLAR approach with say some F/A-18 spare/aftermarket nozzles. Or a total scratchbuild, including individually cast ‘feathers’ to duplicate all the inner/outer petal sheathes.
While not truly a ‘double bubble’ compound as they should be, the canopy and windscreen have excellent clarity. The former does not have a separate frame but instead rests upon the slanted fuselage spine and as descends down into a cutout in the upper fuselage decking. This is technically correct but precludes opening the thing up as the clear canopy itself has very minimalist detail where it flares out to meet this cavity (rather than the stepped crenelations of the actually quite deep, support frame). Nor.does the canopy appear to agree with my plans for slanted frame endpoint (indeed, the instructions show a /sliding/ canopy arrangement) but this at least can be (say it with me), rescribed.
As stated, no HUD glass, IRST dome, seeker head, nav or landing gear lights are provided. At this scale that’s unacceptable. Time to get after the MV lenses or a toothbrush I guess...
Strangely, you do get a rather nice ladder for the cockpit but mine had several of the fragile cross-support struts broken off.
Lastly, the tires are vinyl and slip over two part hubs which can theoretically be made to turn on the struts. We all know what Vinyl is like though I must admit, I’ve not heard of Styrene Cannibalism from ROG kits with ‘rubber’ tires. And while the notion of separate hubs for painting is nice, the complex ‘gunmetal in white’ outline of the MLG wheels especially is still going to be tricky to deal with.
CONCLUSION
Showing a lot of commonality with the older Revell Germany and AMT/ERTL 72nd Eurofighters in shape and layout, this definitely not a kit for the faint of heart. Yet I would say that you get a lot more potential 'fun' with this model than you do with the Italeri models of either scale and certainly the ROG 72nd twin cab (which is accurate but –so tiny-!!).
Doing a practice run on the Italeri (raising the cockpit sill line etc.) should make working with this much more sturdy (thicker walled, less brittle, softer plastic) kit a breeze because all the details which will have to be first-scribed at least will not have to be deliberately obliterated from their existing locations beforehand.
Which is not to say there won’t be significant work to contain the shapes within plan outlines and to rebuild the landing gear. A simple answer may be to pole-model the kit. I like flying airplanes…
If there is a principle drawback, it is in the simple COST of obtaining an example. You will pay anywhere from 70 to 127 dollars, roughly twice per year, on U.S. eBay for a kit that is definitely a hybrid between, say, the 1960s Revell U.S. tooling quality and the later 1990's (JAS-39/F-4F/Tornado), All European, efforts.
Checking on eBay.de and eEBay.co.uk may provide some better cost numbers and certainly more frequent appearance but American buyers will suffer from the vagaries of USD weakness' against the Euro and Pound as well as Trans-Atlantic shipping. Not all European sellers are willing to undertake the added hassle of international delivery, nor do as many employ Paypal or Bidpay to expedite remuneration/exchange of funds. All in all, 60-80 bucks after shipping is again not unlikely for a kit that will take far more effort than the equivalently priced Academy F-16CG.
But if you like that bar dart shape in ‘conversation piece’ scale... ;-)
REFERENCES
© Kurt Plummer 2005
This review was published on Saturday, July 02 2011; Last modified on Wednesday, May 18 2016