AcademyACA12462 Model Kit, Various

I have not yet built this kit,but have opened the box and examined the contents, and perused the instructions. The kit looks reasonably detailed, but I noticed in the instructions that you have drill holes in the under-wings to fit the rocket rails, this could be difficult for a novice/younger modeller.

The kit looks good and is representative of the rocket firing Typhoons I'm writing about. However, I haven't built the kit yet, so do not know how well the parts fit together.

The Hawker Typhoon was the scourge of the Wermacht and took a terrible toll on the German Army's armour during and after the D-Day landings. Originally conceived as a fighter and dogged from the outset by structural failures around the tailplane, the Typhoon found its niche in the ground attack role.Airfix also do a  1/72 representation  of this pugnacious looking aeroplane. At the time of writing it is around about half the price of this Academy kit. While I haven't seen it, I suspect that Airfix's model is a rather old tooling and therefore less detailed than this one. You pays your money...As far as the Academy kit is concerned, it is a very nice model, with finely engraved panel lines and a nicely detailed cockpit (but not overdone - very little can be seen of it even with the canopy open). I have had no trouble getting any of the parts to fit well and there is little or no need to use filler. The one fiddly bit is the eight wing mounted rockets - fitting the tail fins to these is a bit of a chore.The kit allows you to finish one of two aircraft a 175 Squadron plane from 1944 with the distinctive D-Day Invasion stripes and a 3 bladed propeller or a 193 Squadron plane with a four bladed prop and with no stripes. Both are painted in the usual  RAF Dark Green , RAF Ocean Grey  and  RAF Medium Sea Grey  three colour camoflage pattern (I have included links to the relevant Tamiya acrylic paints, but you can use the traditional Humbrol enamels if you prefer). I have uploaded a couple of photos of the finished product.The sister kit to this one is the  Academy Hawker Tempest V . The two aircraft look almost identical to the untutored eye but while the Tempest owed it's heritage to the Tiffie, the two were very different in many important respects. I've already built the Tempest V and it's as good as this one.