Built by a consortium of Alenia Aeronautics, BAE Systems, and European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company N.V. (EADS), the Eurofighter Typhoon first flew in 1994 and now serves Austria, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and the United Kingdom as a multirole fighter.
Revell Germany’s Typhoon comes with an optional engine stand, crew ladder, and positional speed brake, as well as markings for two German and one British aircraft.
Building up the cockpit was no problem. The instrument panel has decals for the multifunction displays. After building the ejector seat, I chose to leave it out until final assembly, when everything goes into the fuselage and gets glued up.
Trying to install the tail assembly, I found it would not go all the way down. I removed a portion of the locating tab on the fuselage to get the tail in the correct position.
If you want to display the engine, you’ll need to do some cutting of the panels on the wing bottom. Revell has included the engine-bay structures. A stand is included to display the engine separately.
After assembling the engine ductwork and wheel wells, I painted them with Tamiya XF-1 white. I first glued the bottom wing to the fuselage, then the top two wing sections. Warpage of the bottom wing and a just-fair fit of the seams along the wing root left a gap that need filling.
The leading-edge slats had several sink marks that needed filling. Looking over the rest of the kit, I discovered sink marks on numerous parts. The elevons were undersized, leaving a large gap.
Landing gear can be posed extended or retracted, but there is no provision for a stand or a pilot if you wanted to have the gear retracted for an inflight display. However, the kit does supply a crew ladder and refueling probe in the extended position.
The fit of the external trunking for the intake (parts 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21) was poor – the right side stuck out, the left side was in. So, you’ll need to make adjustments.
I chose to install the AIM-132 ASRAAM and AIM-120B AMRAAM air-to-air ordnance. The AIM-132’s pieces don’t quite fit, so I had to sand it after assembly to get the right profile.
Decaling the model was a challenge with all the small decals and the busy instruction sheet. The ordnance decal instructions show stripes for the AIM-132, and the callout numbers are 160 and 157 – but one is a stripe and one is a stencil. The fuel tank also shows stripes, not stencils.
I painted the model Humbrol 165 (satin medium sea grey scale) and used the markings of Jagdgeschwader 74 “Molders.”
It took me about 30 hours to build this kit, and it was a challenge. You get an impressive-looking plane, but, because of the aforementioned issues, I would recommend it only to experienced modelers.