Tornado GR.1 Desert Storm JP233

Freak
Planning to do a flying diorama. As you might guess from the dry fit picture, I am a bit worried that the fuel tank and horizontal tailplane may interfere with the wings fully swept. Thus I would like to keep the wings sweepable until the stores are mounted.
Any tips on assembling order for swing-wing fighters? I prefer doing as much as possible on the wings in terms of painting and varnish before assembly, but am not sure how much I should do to the fuselage until the upper and lower halves are glued.

Freak
This is my second kit ever. Doing some experiments with pre-shading on the wings. It seems to work quite OK. In pic 13, one of the wings has had one layer less.

I pre-painted the wings before gluing both halves so that if I have to unsweep them later, I won't show an unpainted surface.

Photo 10 is a neodymium magnet inside the fuselage, for attaching it to a stand

Neal N
That magnet trick is something I might try with the ancient A-6A kit I have. I've been mulling similar magnet tricks for mounting stores too.

Freak
It's neat to be able to remove the stand without any traces on the outside of the model.
For my A-6E I am still not sure how I want to build it. The Italeri kit allows for folding the wings but I like in-flight with those big wings spread out. On the other hand, the size of the Intruder will be clearer with people on the ground standing next to it

Neal N
Oops mine is an A-7A haha. Old Hasegawa with fixed wings and raised panel lining. I'm thinking of doing in-flight since the wheel details are pretty crap. My Kinetic A-6E I will definitely do wings folded purely so it will fit in my office shelf 😄

Carlo
I have used magnets to mount stores but never thought about using them to mount the plane to a stand, very interested to see it on your finished product.

Freak
I'm interested to see how it pans out too. The "opposing" magnet fits between the cluster dispensers, I tested that. But not sure if it will stick to a stand on the thin end. Maybe I shoukd just use some iron for the stand, if that is strong enough. Not sure yet, but luckily I have a few layers of sand color to go before having to decide on that! 😄
Magnets to mount stores is genius! That would allow mounting stores that are "twistable" so you can have a 1:72 Tornado with sweepable wings. I might try that in my next Tornado, though wings in 1:72 are very thin, might not fit a magnet

Carlo
For stores, you only need the 1.5 or 2 mm thick mini magnets. It keeps my fuel drop tank on my F4U Corsair on, no problems.

Freak
Nice! This is a diameter 5 mm, length 10 mm neodymium magnet. Small but very, very strong. Makes sense that a much smaller magnet would suffice for a fuel tank.

Freak
Question: in pic #16, you see that besides the slot-in "pins", the fuel tank hard point also has two "wedges". Note that these are not the connection points to the sprue, I already sanded those down, they were further from the center.

Do these wedges serve any purpose? They are quite sturdy, it is definitely not flash. It seems like they keep the fuel tank at a distance from the hardpoint and also make it almost impossible to align the fuel tank properly.

Just had a thought while writing: are they to be used only if a missile is mounted instead of a fuel tank? Since a missile would have no holes for "pins"

Freak
FYI: After this comment above, I started putting descriptipns on the pictures themselves.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished model at home. I gave it to my father as part of the "Sinterklaas" tradition. It was packed in a shoebox with cardboard attachments that vaguely resembled a Tornado.

Very happy at how it turned out, much better than my first model, mostly thanks to thinner layers of paint and a more thorough wash.