Panavia Tornado - AMI MM7074

This was a special build of one of my favourite plane's, bought for me by a friend as a surprise.

The scheme I decided on was of course the Italian one - and its a plane with a story, the only Italian aircraft that was shot down it the Gulf war. it was the first Italian airforce mission and a turned into a real mess.

I really wanted to go all out on this one - obviously as most planes it started in the cockpit. The detail was decent but I wanted to up it and don't have money to import fancy cockpit sets and aftermarket so decided to do it myself - especially on the seat that would be visible with an open cockpit so I used wires, putty, chocolate wrapper and some plastic to detail it up.

The one part I had issues with was the intakes, the fit was way off and I'm not sure if it was because I didn't align things properly or because its a kit fit issue, but some plastic in there and some sprue goo and I was back on track.

Then Painting time, I used my favourite method of black basing and mottling to try get some interest and a weathered feel to a brown desert bird. Primed it black with Vallejo black primer, then mottled white, then added yellows, reds and blues to the mottling to give variation and highlights.

Then on the underside thin layers of flat aluminium and on the top thin layers of Dessert Yellow so that the mottling is still faintly visible.

Once all was together I started weathering, these desert birds got fairly dirty so I used oils, and Tamiya weathering sets to get a nice used look.

And that was that - off for a photoshoot which you can see more of in the gallery - I hope you enjoyed, sorry it was long, now as promised if you would like to read about the incident of MM7074 I'll add it here courtesy of the article by David Cenciotti - theaviationist.com/2..ration-desert-storm/