Hasegawa 1/72 Eurofighter Typhoon Single Seater Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

In the 1970s, several European nations began to formulate requirements for their next generation of multirole fighters based upon ongoing cold war needs and NATO support obligations. As early development begain in each of these countries, all recognized the risk and expense of such a development was more than any one country would be able to afford. As with the three-country alliance that created PANAVIA's Tornado, a new alliance was formed between the British, Germans, and Italians to create Eurofighter GmbH and its new design, the EF-2000 Typhoon.

First flown in 1994, the Typhoon spend the next nine years working through development and test before entering service in 2003 with the RAF, Luftwaffe, Italian AF, and Spanish AF. The aircraft has also been exported to the Royal Saudi and Austrian Air Forces with other nations considering as well. The aircraft is a twin-engined delta-wing multi-role fighter with canards under the cockpit. The platform uses fly-by-wire technology to bring advanced high-angle-of-attack performance in aerial combat.

Hasegawa has released the single-seat Eurofighter Typhoon kit and as usual, looks really good out of the box. The kit has some great scribed surface detailing without exaggerated rivet or other distractions. The kit is molded in light gray styrene and presented on 13 parts trees plus two trees of clear parts. Among the features and options in the kit:

• Nice ejection seat (needs seatbelts and harness)
• Nice cockpit and HUD
• Positionable canopy
• Positionable canards
• Intake trunks end in blank plate
• Positionable landing gear
• Positionable dorsal speed brake
• Optional pilot figure
• Optional display stand

The kit provides a nice mix of external stores:

• 3 x 1500l external fuel tanks
• 2 x Storm Shadow
• 2 x Taurus KEPD350
• 4 x AIM-120 AMRAAM
• 4 x Meteor
• 6 x Brimstone
• 4 x Alarm
• 4 x IRIS-T
• 4 x ASRAAM

The kit provides marking options for three aircraft:

• Typhoon FGR.4, ZJ921, 3 Sqn (F), RAF
• Typhoon FGR.4, ZJ930, 17 Sqn (R), RAF
• Typhoon, 30+30, JG 74, Luftwaffe, Red Flag Alaska, 2012

The decals are nicely printed and feature an extensive set of airframe stenciling.

This is a really nice looking kit that isn't complex, so this should be an easy build for most modelers. This will be a fun build for the average modeler and provide some interesting opportunities for the AMS modeler that will want to do that little bit of work to enhance the kit. Either way, this Typhoon kit is a welcome addition to scale flight lines everywhere.

My sincere thanks to Hasegawa USA for this review sample!