ITALERI 1:48 EF-2000 "Typhoon"
European Fighter Aircraft

The Kit
There has been the odd attempt to produce a kit of the EFA (European Fighter Aircraft) in the past but now we see a couple of recent releases depicting what will be the in-service version of the aircraft. The long trials period appears to be nearing a conclusion and we should be seeing the Typhoon entering services in the not-to-distant future. RAF squadrons to receive the first aircraft have now been announced. The participating nations, UK, Germany, Italy and Spain, now all have examples on test after a succession of political, economic and technical delays.
Italeri have elected to produce a kit of the two-seater version of the Typhoon initially. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder but I often feel that the two seat version of an aircraft is prettier than the single seater. This Typhoon looks very sleek and shark-like. Did the designer look at a great white shark for the shape of the tail fin? The style of boxing and packaging will be familiar to all, with parts moulded in light grey plastic, a schematic instruction sheet and decals for an aircraft from each of the participating nations completes the set. The quality of the mouldings is reasonable but the finesse of the engraved detail is not as crisp as we have seen on some other Italeri kits. As the same moulds are being sold in Revell's range, these comments will apply to the single seater kit also.

Construction
Cockpit:
In the case of the two-seater, the Typhoon's cockpit is large, appearing to be much more spacious that the old Phantom's. The parts are designed to make as much in common with the single seat version as possible. The whole of the interior was airbrushed with Cockpit Grey FS36375 and details painted as shown on the instructions.
The two seats are good in shape but short on detail. A set of not too convincing seat harness is moulded on to the seat cushions. If you are looking to build a "serious" model of the Typhoon, you will need to do some extra work on the seats or seek a pair of resin/white metal ones.
The same comment applies to the other cockpit parts. The side consoles are flat and the switches, etc represented in the form of decal. Rudder pedals amount to a couple of small footrests moulded on to the floor. Decals are also supplied for the front and rear instrument panels. Neither of them fit the panels, the front is not too bad but the rear decal is a repeat of the front without taking into account the fact that the panel is larger and the absence of the control box positioned upper-centre of the front panel.
As far as the whole cockpit assembly goes, everything fits where it should and with each other. The exception being the front instrument panel. There is no positive location for the panel as shown on the instructions. Fix the panel to the inside of one fuselage half and check fit the cockpit assembly to see that the angle of the panel is correct. Leave the two HUDs until later to avoid damage during further handling. It is also a good idea to leave the final fixing of the seats until later. A cockpit detail set is available from Eduard. This set and a pair of new seats are something of a necessity. Even with the canopy down, the lack of interior detail shows all too well through the large and clear transparency.

Fuselage:
Stage 3 shows the fitting of the cockpit assembly within the fuselage halves and bringing the two halves together. There is a small shelf moulded inside the fuselage halves on which the cockpit assembly fits at the front and the rear of the cockpit fixes to the inside of the fuselage. There is plenty of plastic with which to achieve a good positive join.
Both halves of the fuselage can now be joined together. Plenty of glue on the inside of the tail fin and then the rest of the join can be achieved by running glue into the gap as the parts are held in line with each other. There is a large step between the two halves of the cockpit coaming despite having a perfectly circular hole in the nose and all other areas of the two halves matching well.
Although not shown until Stage 4, I decided to add the fuselage spine at this time. The spine incorporates the large dorsal airbrake that can be fixed open or closed. To ease painting, etc later, the brake was glued to the spine. A little filler was needed to reduce the gaps between the brake and the spine. Once this small problem was fixed, the spine was fixed to the fuselage. A little filler was needed where the rear of the spine meets the front of the tail fin, otherwise the complex shape of the spine fitted the fuselage perfectly.

Wing Assembly:
Eurofighter Typhoon has a 'chin' air intake under the nose and cockpit. Before constructing the wing assembly, the internals of the intake are painted white, built and put to one side to dry.
Italeri have produced the lower wing and fuselage as one large part including the wheel wells. Both upper wing halves fixed to the lower, leaving what I take to be an intentional gap along the line of the lower leading edge slats. A large gap requiring filler appeared at the outer wing join. More filler needed when the intake assembly is glued to the front of the wing assembly. There is also a prominent mould seam that needs removing in the same area to produce smooth contours.
Once the wing assembly is finished you may consider adding some plastic card around the inside of the intake. There are some gaping holes at the back of the intake and in the intake roof. These are not be obvious when the model is finished but can be seen if anyone looks in the right places.

Wing to Fuselage:
Test fit the wings to the fuselage and check to see if you have any problem areas. I had a large step between the join below the left side of the cockpit to the top of the intake. It will be very difficult to correct this after the parts are glued together, so make any necessary adjustments beforehand. Again, the fuselage to wing join is a complex shape that fits quite well. Working on one wing at a time, run a drop of thin superglue along the fine gap between the wing and fuselage. There was another, difficult to see and even more difficult to fill gap between the underside of the nose and the air intake.
You may wish to consider the weapons load that you will use at this time. Holes are provided for four pylons under the wings. Now is a good time to fill any that may not be required. Although the instructions show the addition of the nose canards at this point, they are best left until much later. The nose cone is quite a good fit, requiring only minor adjustment once in place. Some weight was added within the nose just to be on the safe side. A quick text of the centre of gravity would suggest that weight is not needed but better to be safe than sorry so some fishing weights and super glue was dropped into the nose cone.
Before moving on from stage 4, part 34a, the rear fuselage is added. This incorporates a crude representation of the hot end of the engine. I have never seen down the exhaust of the Typhoon but the moulded part looks more like an engine intake turbine than the familiar afterburner ring. There is a small step at the rear of the fuselage resulting from the join between the upper fuselage assembly and the wing being out of line. This needs to be reduced if the rear engine part has a hope of fitting. To save masking, the two jet pipes can be painted and added later. The instructions only show the dodgy-shaped jet pipes in a metal finish. If you look at photos of the Typhoon, the rear panels of the fuselage are also in bare metal.
To complete this stage of building, taking the model to the point of major painting, a couple more parts need to be added. I will build but leave off the wing tip pods for the time being to aid masking. The 27mm cannon is mounted in the wing root and the fairing needs to be fixed in place at this point. Out with the filled again. The profile of the fairing did not match it's surroundings at all well and needed a good deal of filler to make all the contours match. Most photos show the gun deleted and the muzzle outlet faired over. It will not be too difficult to fill the hole to represent the deleted gun.
On the upper nose, there are two items to consider, the inflight refuelling probe on the right and a seeker head on the left. You can finish to model with the inflight refuelling probe deployed or stowed. As the probe will only be popped out for ground maintenance, the parts are left in the box and the door is fitted over the cavity in the nose. The door is not a good fit and the thin super glue was again need to fill the resulting gap. Turning to the other side of the nose and the two-part seeker head. Both halves fit together without difficulty but there is no positive guide to the position of the completed sub-assembly. A couple of pins and holes or a fine raised guideline, similar to those provided for the two small air outlets at the rear of the fuselage would have been useful.

Canopy:
After carefully removing the large canopy from the sprue, a test fit would reveal more problems. You can avoid one of these immediately by electing to pose the canopy in the raised position but do you want to reveal the sparse interior quite so openly? The second problem will take rather longer to correct. About 3mm aft of the main canopy front frame there is a prominent mould seam line. At first I took this to be a rather wide frame but no, it is what we all hate, a mould line on a transparent part. It took a half hour of careful scrapping and re-polishing to remove. The metal work at the back of the canopy is much too wide. Most of the headrest of the rear seat should be visible but is obscured by the over-wide frame.
Some minor adjustment to the length of the main canopy was needed to make the canopy and screen fit in the prescribed space, by carefully sanding the rear frame and test fitting frequently. The final problem is more difficult to solve, the cross section of the main canopy does not match that of the windscreen. The easy option is to pose the canopy in the raised position but I did find a way to correct the problem.
While being worried that a stress fracture may occur, I cut a short length of sprue and wedged this within the front of the main part of the canopy to spread the part until it matched the profile of the windscreen. When the match looked good, a drop of liquid super glue was used to glue the screen to the main canopy. Once the glue was secure, the sprue was removed and much to my relief, the join is holding. When the, now one-piece, canopy is glued to the fuselage the whole thing should stay in this position for good. Here is another good reason why kit manufacturers should supply a choice of a split or one-piece canopy.

Paintwork and Decals:
At this stage, it is best to carry out the main paintwork. Italeri supply markings for British, German, Italian and Spanish test aircraft, all in the same overall Light Ghost Grey FS 36375. One of the UK's single seaters has been given an overall coat of gloss black that looks really good but I thought the overall grey a bit dull.
A few minutes looking through decal spares would produce the markings for the finished review sample, showing the Eurofighter in No. 56 Squadron display markings. Sadly 56 is not amongst the first units to receive the new aircraft. Post Office Red is applied in a similar pattern to that used on 56 Squadron Lightnings many years ago, to the spine, tail and leading edges of the wings. Flint Grey as applied to the RAF's F4J Phantoms was used as the basic colour of the airframe and a colour mixed for use on F-16 nose cones was used on the nose of this model. While painting the red areas of the aircraft, the missiles are given a coat of the same colour. Wheel wells, inner doors and undercarriage are all white.
After application of the fictitious paintwork, the old AeroMaster Lightning decals were applied along with some Hunter serials and roundels. Purist will probably wince at my choice of scheme but I think the end result looks very attractive. Italeri's stencilling items are added to complete the job. All of the small kit decals worked perfectly well so use any of the supplied schemes from the kit decal sheet without hesitation. I was caught out by the instructions for item 16 at the rear of the fuselage. The instructions show them at completely the wrong angle I was to discover too late.

Undercarriage:
All wheels are supplied in halves to build and paint before adding to the legs. The nose leg drawing shows the torque link at the wrong end of the leg. Anyone familiar with aircraft anatomy will notice the mistake and place the part in the correct place. The completed assembly fits securely in place without difficulty. There isn't much to hold the nose undercarriage door, only a thin door edge to glue to the nose. The door is the right shape but the area into which it fits when closed looks wrong. I was unable to find a clear underside photo that shows the closed nose door and its surroundings.
Follow the instructions showing the sequence of construction for the main undercarriage. The hole in the main leg for the actuating jack passes all the way through the leg, making it all too easy to fix the jack on to the wrong side of the leg. Test fit the undercarriage parts into their location holes, they are a tight fit but end up at the right angle when everything is in place. I glued the main undercarriage inner door jacks to their recess in each door only to find that the top of the jacks would not hit the location holes in the wheel well. The main door should not be vertical.

Armament:
You have a full load of AMRAAM and Sidewinder missiles and a pair of long range fuel tanks. The pylons for the tanks were such a good fit that they would hold if just pushed into position. None of the missiles are particularly good and would be best replaced with neater ones from a weapons set.
To complete the underside of the model, four small aerials are shown fitted to the lower nose. Again, no positive clue as the where the four parts should be attached, I spaced them as evenly as possible and attached each of them with a small drop of super glue. They appear to be fitted to some aircraft and not to others, so check references if possible.

Final Construction:
Tipping the Typhoon back onto its wheels, the canards and the cockpit canopy are the last parts to be glued in place. The angle at which the canards attach is not clear in the instructions and the attachments make it easy to have them at almost any angle you like. Either a drawing showing the correct angle or a fool proof location would have been helpful.
Adding the complete canopy/windscreen was the final task. The bottom profile of the canopy did not fit the profile of the nose, leaving a wide gap on one side between the bottom of the canopy and the fuselage. I tacked the canopy in place with super glue and then used Clearfix to fill the holes, painting over the filler when it was dry enough.

Conclusion:
As you will have gathered, this was a project not without its difficulties. I do not remember using the knife and so much filler on one kit for a long time. As so many of these parts are common to the single seat version of the kit now available, the same will apply to that version. One area that can only be an improvement is the canopy. This one caused so many problems and then still has the rear framing badly wrong after all of the other fit difficulties have been corrected. Italeri should scrap the tool for the canopy and start again. Make one the right size and shape, that will fit together, please.
A very good article used as reference for this review appears in World Air Power Volume 35. A careful look at the photos there will show the various other deficiencies in Italeri's Typhoon. We await another attempt at an accurate, well fitting representation of this exciting new aircraft with anticipation. I finish with a pretty model of a Typhoon, just don't compare it with the real thing.

Alan Firbank
Gloucester IPMS
September 2001