Revell | Eurofighter IBR Part 1

Reviewed by Kurt Plummer

A HISTORY

Begun in the early '80s as response to AST403 (Air Staff Target, similar to the MENS or Mission Element Needs specification which leads to an 'RFP' or Request For Proposals in U.S. acquisition system) the Eurofighter represented a response to a critical 'divergence of airpower' modes not entirely unlike that of the JSF today. For while the notorious White Paper of the 1950s had basically denuded Great Britain of useful fighter design capability and foolishly committed them towards an All-STOVL design base in both service specialist (the Royal Navy especially) requirements and the Kingston/Warton design houses of BAC (what became BAe) to generate independent responses to. The fact remained that neither the Harrier nor any of it's P.1154 paper plane offshoots was ever a fighter and as an attack aircraft it was not worth the cost of 'hiding it' from budgetary oversight vs. the declared NATO mission need for frontal support.

This in turn led to a series of 'compromise is our middle name' consortia design efforts in the late sixties through middle seventies which resulted in supersonic trainers that cost four times as much to operate as the T-38 as a function of a 'secondary' attack role which later came to dominate the service use of the SEPECAT Jaguar (because the Harrier is so awful).

And of course the Panavia Tornado which was an interdictor of some competence but had no legs and was never engined or winged for high altitude use. The inevitable result was of course the purchase of a /third/ type, 'uncompromised' as an interim true fighter in the form of the F-4K/M (FG.1 and FGR.2) Phantom.

Yet even this venerable stalwart was not allowed to remain 'unfixed' in the bureaucratic entrails of British Design Influence as it's Spey re-engining largely ruined the airframe's existing structural load transfer geometries and vastly increased it's drag for questionable increase in total thrust (the British Phantoms are all slower than their U.S. counterparts, despite having almost 3,000lbst more per side).

The result was such that the Phantom, absent a STOVL RN's 'dual service' need for its carrier capabilities was leaving the RAFG as a frontal fighter even as the equally flawed Tornado F.3 came online to challenge the Rhino's place in the 'Approaches' defense of the UKADGE. The ADV is in fact a superb loitering/long range interceptor but lacks almost all the qualities required of an air superiority type operating in a medium altitude BVR environment.

Meanwhile, the existing Jags and Tornado IDS' lacked the legs to reach Central Germany from the UK on a useful sortie commitment basis and were crippled for all weather target penetration and Air to Air survivability measures when faced with the full weight of the Russian Horde. Simply put, when operating out of RAFG bases in Germany proper, they couldn't share the load of achieving even local air supremacy and by the late 1970s their lolo performance was no longer a guarantee of independent operational freedom in the face of Soviet LDSD intercept.

As had been proven early in the F-16's 'competitive bombing' demonstrations in Scotland; a small, dedicated, radar equipped, dogfighter could could do better in unescorted lolo penetration and at least as well in achievable CCIP/Toss accuracies with dumb munitions during lolo ops. Basically, thrust and low frontal area overcame aspect ratio advantages for assured penetration speed and 'modular' heavy A2G stores on a small wing provided reasonable ride quality in the face of the 'bumpies' of low altitude turbulence.

At the same time, the UK was also perceived to be falling behind the unanswered technical capabilities evident in not only the U.S. F-14/15 but also the Mirage F-1C and 2000 and even the new JA-37 Viggen. Namely the ability to combine EID tree and extended SARH/ARH shot missiles to avoid the traditionally perceived limitations of fighting beyond visual range.

And so it was. 'Everybody' (Vae Victis Vickers) wanted a cheap, lightweight, fighter to replace their 1960s attack and training jets (Mirage V, F-104, F-4F, Jaguar). And everyone wanted a fighter that could perform WVR 'dogfighting' as well as the new hotjet F-16 while carrying an equal load. And the RAF at least also wanted a jet that could chuck long spears sufficiently well to stand 'shoulder to shoulder' with the American F-15 and F-18 jets which would be contesting air supremacy over the FRG and Farnborough circuit against the (apparently) equally BVR capable MiG-29/31 and new 'bogeyman' fighter: the Su-27.

The first key to getting there was to exploit modern design and materials improvements, made since the 1970s 'super fighter' teen development efforts, to contain size and weight (which has a benchmark value in fighter design of roughly 1 million dollars per 1,000lbs empty equipped airframe mass). Without sacrificing the necessary fuselage area for a twin-engine, highly supersonic accelerative, thrust to weight ratio. And BVR missile recesses.

One obvious way to get there was to shift to a canard delta format in a jet roughly the size of the American Hornet and delete the tails (and navalization weight) in favor of a full length fuselage wing chord to provide a strong wing:fuselage pairing for high G, high speed maneuver while offering volume to house both the fuel and the landing gear within a reasonable span:area effect on aspect ratio (the Eurofighter actually has a wingspan closer to an F-16 than an Eagle). The delta canard approach was the obvious answer as this also allowed much of the empennage weight to be removed and offloaded download forces on the trailing edge elevons, a traditional problem with deltas. Early drawings of the Lockheed ATF seemed to confirm that this was 'the way the Americans would go too' as a small, fixed, micro-canard in front of a massive triangular wing with 'capped' rear fuselage booms was clearly evident.

The fact that this would be predominantly a NATO (sub 300nm radius) fighter meant that a low internal fuel weight of roughly 10,000lbs (4,500kg) was acceptable, even though the F/A-18 had been a great disappointment with similar fuel fraction in a like takeoff weight class leaving a jet that needed IFR to make more than 190nm radius.

The second key was Germany. A nation which had F-4F Phantoms; classically huge 'missileer' interceptors with purely 1960s close-in dogfight performance. And no radar weapons (by post-war Treaty) to keep threats at arms reach. For the Luftwaffe then, the driving need as the Cold War at last heated up towards a potential Central Front war in the mid-'80s was to become 'self-defending over the other guy's territory' with a valid BVR multishot capability. The F-4F ICE program to provide AMRAAM was years away and in any case, the Flanker was thought to outclass the U.S. weapons with the much larger Alamo-ER/ET. With this in mind, Germany developed a mission requirement for a large inventory (180-220 airframes) of pure interceptors to match Great Britain's 'multirole replacement' force requirement.

France was the stumbling block, as a nation who had been repeatedly snubbed on the MRCA/Mirage G program and the F-16/Mirage F-1/JAX-37 'Deal of the Century' buys, her Mirage 2000 export sales had been vastly less impressive than the Mirage III progenitor and she had a strong incentive to 'nationalize' Europe away from British/U.S. arms supplier influence. The Dassault solution to 'everybody's problems' was the ACX, a jet more specifically tailored to the Jaguar (light attack) replacement role for both total cost (empty weight of 19-20,000 instead of 27-30,000lbs) and role preservation of further Mirage 2000 sales, the latter a credible if unexceptional radar missileer/dogfighter combined platform.

Yet by lobbying hard and using a configuration highly common to the German 'TKF-90' (Tactical Battle Fighter 1990's) design with '1/3rds for the top two, 1/4s for the rest' production splits based on inventory purchases, the British won the day with a fighter that was indeed /a fighter/ (raw sex appeal) as well as a sure thing number of multinational production commitments to spread the lucre` of profits and national pride. A shared Panavia (Tornado) production history between 3 of the 4 team members also helped. The French, having a terrible habit of 'agreeing' to take both design responsibility and 60% of production rights just could not compete, though the Rafale was itself subsequently 'fighterized' for performance and had a further valuable edge in being CVTOL rated for conventional carrier employment (a potentially valuable incentive to Italy and Spain).

Unfortunately, Murphy's Mice overran the plans of men as the collapse of the Warsaw Pact almost required Germany to reunify in the aftermath of Reagan's "Mr Gorbachov..." speech on the Berlin Wall. And the costs of bringing a raped socialist sister state into the Western World of power capitalism as well as the lack of an immediate threat just over the IGB to Continental Air Sovereignity made the Eurofighter, extant, look decidedly lopsided in its achieved vs. 'later tranche planned' multi-mission equipment list.

At the same time, the 1990 ATF competition revealed that 'minor LO concessions' in the design of America's own next generation fighter had in fact been speciously understated as these aircraft debuted with almost F-117 level frontal signature reduction. And supercruise to take the game deep into the enemy team's backfield.

With the aftermath of Desert Storm highlighting the Black Jet as a 'one target, one airplane' force /replacement/ option to large aerial armadas; it seemed that both technically and by-need (Bosnia and Deny Flight/Deliberate Force/Allied Force were only 3 years away) for expeditionary commonality, the largely conventional European aero design teams had once again missed a march.

With the coming EU internationalization of currency values (and debt consolidations to support same) also on the horizon, Germany fought hard to be allowed to secede from the project or to send it back to a 'Eurofighter Lite' R&D redesign phase which would have resulted in an EJ-200 Gripen specification for a jet 20 million dollars less than the burgeoning 60 million dollar price tag of the existing configuration.

This combination of factor, along with continuing commitments in the PG, largely did to the Eurofighter what it did to the F-22, keeping the aircraft from first production deliveries in roughly 1996 timeframe for a pre-2000 (1998) IOC. With the failure to reach service before the millennium, the 'EF-2000' working name was also abandoned and the designator 'Typhoon' chosen. A name which had common roots with a (failed tail interceptor) WWII RAF _attack fighter_ and the equally uninspired German light trainer/civilian Bf 108 Taifun. And spirits sank lower in the face of the obvious PR spin being played.

Despite all the conundrums, second day sticker shock 'buyers regret' syndrome and general lack of interest in investing in nationalist war fighter tools of destruction at the end of a decade of profitable peace; the lawyers won the day for the Eurofighter. Pointing out the crippling contractual default penalty clauses which the relevant aerospace companies had put in after the A-12 debacle. And Eurofighter scraped through, albeit in production numbers roughly a third less and with no further exports in sight as the windup to the Joint Strike Fighter began with JAST studies in 1994.

The latter's guaranteed slick factor 'Stealth' advertising attached to a range of dominant American munitions (AMRAAM and JDAM) total package assurances makes for a hard economic 1-2 punch to ignore. Yet most analysts believe even the F-35 will arrive too late to beat the arrival of laser weapons and the general cheapness of robotic UCAV 'cruise missile with landing gear' throwaway bombers.

So, with the F/A-22 effectively SIDS killed in the cradle; the Eurofighter, with its better-than-JSF aero-performance and better than F-15 (with Meteor) standoff LRAAM capabilities, may truly represent the peak of manned fighter design, even as the jet has also gained significant 'emergency' standoff A2G ordnance in the Storm Shadow, Armiger, AASM and Brimstone to 'don't go there' render a direct comparison with American VLO ability drop of cheaper-by-the-hundred JDAM ballistic weapons less cut and dried for sortie rates and total aim points per mission.

Much remains to be done in clearing these munitions within the last planned Tranche 2 buy (think F-16C.40 structural upgrades among other things) but with the F-35 now proving the adages of the 'two many roles, too few airframes', of a 2 year late and 3,400lb overweight, split personality program directive; it says much about our Interesting Times that the 2nd best 'pure air' fighter may now have the become the last and most developed multirole manned tactical jet.

THE KIT

IN GENERAL

First off, let me say that I am only using the plans available on Airwar.ru (see REFERENCES) because the Aerofax datagraph book is too expensive and the WAPJ 3-view alternatives blatantly dated. Errors may therefore be attributable to me, the unknown source of the plans I’m using or pure dumb luck. Ever since I saw the first mockup, I have always liked the harshly geometric lines of the Eurofighter, being sleek unlike the shipping crate approach used by U.S. VLO design. Yet rakishly simple compared to the 'curvy' French Rafale with it's bloated belly. Getting hold of the 32nd kit proved to be a bit of a pain however while working on the 48th Italeri kits as ‘practice’ an exercise in even greater levels of masochistic patience.

The Revell Of Germany (hereafter ROG) 32nd Eurofighter (Kit #4794) was a short term release in the early 1990s that never made it out of the blue box import category to a general North American wide release. Probably because the subject was not interesting to a U.S. market in love with stealth and the F-4F/Tornado kits were inflicting a lot of sticker shock.

I mean, the gall of it all, a 45-55 dollar 32nd kit?!? :-)

This is not to say that the kit is not a good one, for you get Seven Sprues plus one separately bagged Clear and another set of Rubber Tires totaling some 119 (take that Trumpeter!) parts. All the EFA’s principle elements of fuselage and wings are decently tooled in a light neutral grey styrene with 'German' attention to smooth surface quality. A lot of rough texturing or uneven surface quality is present on the smaller parts however. Unfortunately, all panel separations are raised and I mean /all/ as only the rudder is indicated by hinge line indent and multiple areas of complex detail vents and outlets associated with the inlet boundary control system and environmentals are represented only as a rough outlines. The instructions are in the typical 'newsprint booklet’ style of later ROG releases with pictographic illustrations of 41 assembly steps in a total of 13 pages plus an extra for notes.

COCKPIT

The cockpit main panel has relatively good raised detail for the MFDs and UFC though most of the backup flight 'analogue' instruments and telltale lights are absent. The Up Front Controller is marred by having a sink mark in the middle of its knobs.

Side Console detail is raised but only to the extent of hollow outlines for panel inserts and a few buttons etc. Decals are provided as an alternative for these consoles and appear useable. The throttle quadrants, while present do not include tops.

The seat is 'something akin' to a Mk.9 or .10 with the large rectangular head box and textured cushions in separate back and pan elements plus side appliqués for the raised details of the frame proper. There is no 'shouldering' effect where the head box is narrower than the back frame and the overall feel of the part is beyond minimalist as the real Eurofighter uses a Mk.16 lightweight seat with an almost vestigial head box and much more complex side panel/armrest and seat details. Unfortunately, there are not many 32nd aftermarket options for European seats these days so one may be stuck with scratchbuilding or using one of the F-14D (Mk.14) or Tornado (Mk.10) seats from the Cutting Edge/CAM conversions or the Black Box range.The rest of the cockpit consists of separate rudder pedals and a full length stick which I believe is inappropriate as the Eurofighter uses a pedestal mount not unlike the hand controller in a Tomcat RIO cockpit.

A HUD frame is provided but has no clear element to represent the (large) holographic combiner. The rear decking detail is restricted to humped screen cover attached to the back of the tub for the blackhole avionics well and a separate coaming section over the main instrument panel. Both are notably different in shape from the complex forms provided in the Italeri kit.

FUSELAGE

In general outline, the fuselage of the 32nd Eurofighter is correct in it's appearance with particularly the appropriate degree of squat-on-haunches downwards slope to it's rear fuselage engine bays. Something that Italeri misses. However; like all kits prior to ROGs own recent 72nd 2-seater, it is woefully incorrect in sectional depth. This actually begins on the spine just under the speed brake and continues down to the forward windscreen line where the nose again tapers, this time inappropriately, and ends 1.5mm too short. Part of this is due no doubt to the shape of the radome for the Eurofighter Mockup indeed had a symmetrical, almost conically-slender nose. But all the flying aircraft have a serious schnozz, necessary to accommodate the ovoid radome which allows for gimbaled articulation of a conventional mechanical (CAPTOR) slotted-planar array. Part of the fix is to take the nose:radome break further back to just barely in front of the windscreen and the rest will require sectioning the fuselage and jacking it up with sprue or EG sheet.

Similarly, the 32nd ROG kit does capture the lower 'jutted chin' appearance of the real jet's deep nose profile but the canard actuator bulge, multiple ECS intakes and vents and the dimpled pinch of the fuselage itself below the horizontal strake (aft of the canards) are not at all represented, simply because these features were largely 'bluff' on the earlier mockup as well.

Italeri got the vents but their canard bulges are more or less ovoid instead of reverse pyramidal and far too pronounced. They also blew chunks over the pinch-in profile and depth of the chin to the extent that you must cut and bend the nose downwards before adding a .30 spacer.

Neither manufacturer got the raised, 3-panel slime lights that are on the forward fuselage of all production Eurofighters.

Something less excusable on the Revell kit is the Lower Fuselage which is almost carved-soap-block plain with only two of the four required engine bay cooling intakes (note, some recent photos now only show two…) and none of the smaller NACA inlets. Obviously, ALL panel lines are absent. The concave taper between the engine bays is present but not terribly well handled and an openable EJ-200 engine bay (with no internal structural detail in the upper fuselage) harms the structural integrity of the fuselage buildup as a whole. I remember cussing over this with the old 32nd F-4 kits and I /still/ don’t get why anyone would want to have a separable engine (cough Tamiya cough) without a nozzle to plug the tail up with.

Using the Airwar.ru plans or the largely 'similar' Italeri under-fuselage area should help to engrave the lines but even so the MLG bays will need to be scratched and the NLG bay reduced in size.

Despite this, the most poorly handled area of the Revell 32nd fuselage is in fact the Karman type fairing caps which blend the wing root panels into the fuselage proper. These root fairings are approximately 30mm too long, and at least 5mm too narrow (though a part of this is the width of the fuselage itself). These are so far off in fact that, with the radome breakline matched up, the engine bay covers extend a further 10mm farther 'south' than where they should in fact meet up with the nozzles. Major cut and hack job I'm afraid.

Lastly, the upper fuselage spine itself is perhaps slightly too slender in width as well as the sloping .25-3mm too high through the aforementioned speedbrake area.

Yet, overall, the ROG 32nd kit remains superior to the Italeri model here because it does not separate the spine to provide for a secondary two-seater model. The latter feature (on the 48th and 72nd kits) completely compromises the upper fuselage and leaves you with a very difficult seam line to handle. Unfortunately, the differing widths of the full depth nose and ‘hollow’ main fuselage sections of the kit tend to provide a banana-kink which needs careful taping to ensure proper alignment. Even here however; the Revell provision of a mid fuselage bulkhead (with one EJ-200 fan face) provides stiffness /and/ the correct width of the fuselage while the Italeri needs almost .60 of strip inserts in the nose before the fuselage top will even consider fitting over the lower inlet. I would additionally be remiss if I didn’t also mention a mesh FOD guard as an option to filling out the inlet trunking.

‘Ahhhh, the good ol’ daze…’

FLYING SURFACES

Aside from the aft rootfairings, the wings are closely accurate in outline at root and along the leading edge for sweep but in total chord and span are approximately 10 and 6 millimeters respectively too large to fall within the outlines of the 19.61 inch long plans I am using (the vagaries of metric precision set against 'digital inches' on a photo rendering program, the real jet is 15.96m/52.3ft long).

As has been stated before, overall detail is very generalist if not outright absent and in the case of the (composite in real life with few access panels or fasteners) wings, this is probably a 'good thang' as the Leading Edge Slats and Trailing Edge Flaps are separated into two sections (which is accurate) per side but with a 'divider' in between which is not. The LES are generally accurate for total tip:root chorded hinge line displacement (10 and 4mm vs. 10 and 5mm for plans) from the leading edge but the TEF are way off at 11 and 18 (vs. the 14 and 29mm they should be), when added to the generally oversized wing chord, this poses significant problems for reduction but again, raised lines mean less fill and rescribe. Additionally the LES are missing the tapered outboard section lines and the crenellated access panels behind the actual deployable surfaces. More scribing.

Sectionally, the wing's overall appearance is actually superior to that of the later Italeri kits, capturing better, IMO, the complex leading edge root twist which literally raises the real wing about 6.2 inches (according to plans) above the mean LE waterline to meet the wing roots over the cannon/MAWS fairing bulges. I assume this is an aerodynamic feature designed to separate inboard and outboard stall points by relative AOA but it could just as easily be to provide depth to clear the tire + strut into the fuselage belly or to shorten the gear leg's themselves. While definitely present and almost F4U gull-like on the real jet, Italeri portrays this area as being almost plank-straight. Similarly, the outboard panels trailing edge twist and washout is better captured than the Italeri version so that the wing literally seems to sag or 'smile' in the mid span.

Unfortunately, there are other shortcomings.

Both the upper and lower wings are separate from the fuselage and though a full depth vertical root wall is provided to ensure optimum mating area; it is (IMO) unwise to transfer loads from a large, low-wing, monoplane model with the gear outboard through a glued inboard seam across a broad fuselage. The provision of coat hangar through-body spars seems wise but the open inlet and asymmetric design of the fuselage (pancake split) separation may make this difficult as the upper fuselage has both the tabs per side which assure longitudinal alignment of the wings but is itself somewhat pinched, span-wise, until the lower belly is added and this effects the setting of the anhedral of the wing roots overall.

Additionally, the MLG wheel wells are rectangular in outline and too far aft so that they do not match the correctly trapezoidal shape of the MLG strut covers. While both the inboard and outboard doors are present, they are the wrong size and terminate at the wing root rather than continuing into the main fuselage (in this, the Eurofighter is akin to the F-5 series fighters). This is crippling because the inboard doors _do not_ appear to re-close on power down. The wells and doors both are detailed with ROGs patented period 'circuit analogue' generic shapes that in no way portray the actual structual frames, hydraulic lines and actuator mounting blocks of the real jet.

Part 2