Royal Saudi Air Force Tornado IDS

And so it begins 

AirWaves resin wing with slats / flaps extended (left) vs. the boring kit wing (right).  

The resin wings needed a good bit of trimming and cleaning-up. Left wing is nearly finished.  

I slotted the wing pivot point holes to give me the ability to install the wings later during final assembly.  

Perfect fit.  

Next, the wing glove seal areas needed to be closed in. I will scribe ribbed detail on these later. I also added sheet styrene shims so that the wings will not droop when installed.  

The canopy had a gap at the trailing edge, so I shimmed it with.010” styrene sheet.  

Looking good so far… 

Another amazing product from ResKit! These engine nozzles and thrust reversers will really make this model pop! 

The pour stubs were all removed with my Olfa knife saw blade attachment.  

It took a lot of trimming, fitting, repeating to get the nozzles to a perfect gap-free fit. These will be attached with white glue during final assembly.  

I bought these decals on eBay. They are low-quality TRASH, just like the F-15E set I bought for the other Desert Storm model I’m currently building. I’ll end up using a few of them but most of my Saudi markings will come from another decal sheet.  

I’m using a bit of this material for the lenses of the LRMTS pod.  

I installed two pieces of the iridescent film with white glue. I will mask off the sensor windows, and once the fairing is painted, the film will give off a nice effect.  

Self-adhesive Lead foil tape was embossed with a “quilted” pattern by rolling the knurled ferrule of an X-Acto knife handle over the foil. I used this to add cockpit insulation for a little more detail. I also glued in some smashed Lead fishing weights with Sprue Goo.  

It’s subtle, but every little bit of detail helps  

Styrene rod was used to enlarge the horizontal stabilator “horns”. The original design had tiny attachment pins which never seem to work out right.  

Much better and stronger! 

. The AirWaves UK resin wings had no pylon attachment points. I drilled the attachment point holes all the way through the kit wings.  

I then laid the kit wings on top of the resin wings to “transfer” the holes by drilling through the kit wings into the resin wings underneath.  

Transferred holes were deepened to allow the pylons to attach 

A homemade jig is used to hold the aircraft while the super glue holding the outboard pylons cures.  

More details added to both main landing gear bays 

Bare metal gun fairings and other areas sprayed with Metallizer and masked 

.005” plastic card glued on to make a frame hoop between canopy and windscreen  

Everything glued together with added frame hoop detail  

Much clearer dipped in Future  

Canopy and windscreen (joined) and masked for paint