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Airfix Harrier 1/72, First Photoetch Foray


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Thought I'd never use photoetch, but figured I should try it at least once.

Picked up a set for the Hasegawa AV8-B on Ebay for $11 - which is not exactly a GR1. Was only going to use the seatbelts, but then thought I'd use a few more bits. Figured I'd file and cut to make it fit the Airfix kit. Also added some scratch belts out of an old soft drink can for the top belts.

Watched a few intro vids on using photoetch and got stuck in. Had to sand away the edges of the side consoles as they are too wide for the Airfix pit. One snapped and needed careful re-attachment. Glued some bits with CA, the IP bits with Future. Busted a few bits off and lost em (there are spares that I'll put on later at a more sensible stage of construction :rolleyes: ), decided not to use the IP transparent film and just put a pool of Future in each instrument hole, as the film killed too much of the nice detail.

Photoetch in 1/72 is crazy small!

Still needs some touchups and a few bits of photoetch added to the IP, including a very fiddly looking little gunsight which will need careful folding.

I reckon where possible, sticking photoetch down with Future is much better than CA - more time to get it lined up just right.

Thanks God for my cheapie Optivisor or this would be impossible.

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Here with the cockpit temporarily in situ. Had to carve away a bit of plastic inside to get that boxy thing in the middle of the IP to fit, but it went in fairly painlessly in the end......after dropping the IP, having that tiny box fly off somewhere, moving everything on my worktable looking for it & then crawling around on the carpet for 10mins swearing like....well you don't wanna know. It was right under my chair and incredibly I did not kneel on it and squash it flat as a tack <_<

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I've also discovered if you assemble the interior intakes as per the destructions, you end up with a 2mm gap inside the front wheel well. If you joined those two intakes in the middle first to avoid that gap, you'd have big gaps between the inner and outer intakes. I think hiding the gap in the wheel well is the lesser of two evils :blink:

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Airframe construction proceeding. Fit is pretty good, but fuselage joins required some putty, and wing root and leading edges will too. Probably more my fault than the kits for the front fuselage due to shoehorning in the incorrect photoetch ;)

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  • 4 weeks later...

Been away in Tasmania fly-fishing for a few weeks :thumbsup: , so only recently back into this.

Shoehorned in the AV8 Eduard PE gunsight - has to sit a bit lower than it should to get the windscreen to fit but it'll do. Also added a scratched pad on the edge of the gunsight as some of my GR1 ref pics showed this. Using a fair bit of Tamiya putty-acetone slurry to fill minor gaps. Had to add a little styrene + putty in the gap where the lower intakes meet the fuselage.

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Yessir, Great job, and in 1/72 scale at that!!! I build mostly in 1/48 scale for two reasons: First, I'd really like to build all my stuff in 1/32 scale, but space and $$$ keep that idea at bay. Second, 1/48 scale allows for more detail(you absolutely shot down that theory!) My excuse is gonna be that I'm a month shy of 60 years old, but I have been blessed with great eyesight. 1/48 scale also doesn't take up the space that 1/32 does as far as display. I have a few 1/32 & 1/72 scale kits that I bought because the prices were just too appealing.

You have done a magnificent job building your Harrier in the smaller scale. AND, a Harrier is a small airplane to begin with! I can't wait to see more of your models. If you do a few more kits in 1/72 scale, I can tell you one thing for sure. If you build a larger scale airplane, especially in 1/32 scale, you'll think that you are working on the real aircraft. In fact, it would really be something if you did one of the airplanes that you did in 1/72, such as the Harrier and do it in 1/48 scale or do a 1/72 scale F-16, then do a Tamiya F-16 in 1/32 scale. The only difference that you would probably notice would be the price of the kit, PE, etc. If you do that kind of work in 1/72, watch out modelling world, here comes Thommo!!! Good Luck.

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Yessir, Great job, and in 1/72 scale at that!!! I build mostly in 1/48 scale for two reasons: First, I'd really like to build all my stuff in 1/32 scale, but space and $$$ keep that idea at bay. Second, 1/48 scale allows for more detail(you absolutely shot down that theory!) My excuse is gonna be that I'm a month shy of 60 years old, but I have been blessed with great eyesight. 1/48 scale also doesn't take up the space that 1/32 does as far as display. I have a few 1/32 & 1/72 scale kits that I bought because the prices were just too appealing.

You have done a magnificent job building your Harrier in the smaller scale. AND, a Harrier is a small airplane to begin with! I can't wait to see more of your models. If you do a few more kits in 1/72 scale, I can tell you one thing for sure. If you build a larger scale airplane, especially in 1/32 scale, you'll think that you are working on the real aircraft. In fact, it would really be something if you did one of the airplanes that you did in 1/72, such as the Harrier and do it in 1/48 scale or do a 1/72 scale F-16, then do a Tamiya F-16 in 1/32 scale. The only difference that you would probably notice would be the price of the kit, PE, etc. If you do that kind of work in 1/72, watch out modelling world, here comes Thommo!!! Good Luck.

Thanks mate. I may end up doing some larger scales, not for myself but for others as a new shop has moved to the little town 20mins down the road from me, and they build defence models for customers, including those large scratch-built ships you see in museums etc. I contacted them to see if they need any help with their a/c models, and they may do. I'm 52 now and my close-up eyesight has lost a lot of ground in recent years. Distance eye-sight is still A1. I use an optivisor a lot for modelling now.

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Got the basic dark sea grey (Tamyia acryl) on. This is going to be my second attempt at freehand camo. Next i'll post shade it with some neutral grey, perhaps lighten a few areas. Then do the same with the dark green. I'll apply the dark green more carefully to build up a more wavy camo pattern, then pre-shade/fade that as well.

This is the first a/c I've done where the upper camo wraps round onto leading edges of wings and stabilisers which is a bit of a PITA to mask.

I made it to this stage until breaking off the nose antenna thingy. Seems all the build reviews I read also broke it. Would be easier if it was a separate piece to be added later rather than moulded to the nose cone.

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Now a little post-shading added to the dark sea grey. Initially I tried this with neutral grey cos the lid colour def looked darker than the dark sea grey, but it looked lighter from various angles when applied so I added some Nato Black to the mix & re-did it. It may need some more blending yet, but I'll wait till I've got the green on to make the call.

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Compared to my Hampden build (my first go at freehand camo), I've struggled more with this one. In part this is because the demarcation between the colours had to be fresher and sharper, and in part the airbrush/paints were just not playing ball. So I watched a few vids on how to freehand and reached the verdict it is art not science. On different days with different colours, the paint will react differently, esp acrylics. I find the rare times I shoot enamels, they spray much smoother/finer. I also think the paint in some of my old Tamiya jars is getting very old and gritty.

So I mucked about with thinning and pressure and did lots of AB dismantling and cleaning and eventually got it going OK with thinner paint & pressure down to about 14psi (instead of my usual 20). Tip - don't clean your Iwata with tissues - the little fibres accumulate and eventually block the needle tip. Use an old t-shirt instead :bandhead2: I've also started cranking the pressure to 40+psi when I shoot through cleaner at the end of a session to try and blast out more gunk. And I've also learned if you don't put some lubricant on the needle, sometimes it will not seat all the way forward and you will get paint spraying even when the trigger is in the fully forward position (i.e. when you should only get air). Big learning curve still :rolleyes:

Now got the green on (not yet post-shaded) but also had to do a lot of re-touching the grey due to green overspray (which of course wiped out some of my grey post-shading). And then had to re-touch some green.

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Edited by Thommo
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Camo and gloss coat on. Despite the destructions and ref pics showing some pretty glossy finishes, I'm going to dull this right down at the finish with Vallejo flat clear. I just can't live with shiny planes.

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  • 3 weeks later...

In the home stretch. The gloss coat turned out a little gritty (Tamyia clear gloss initially, then Future thinned with Tamyia acrylic thinner), so I had to dull it down a little more than I'd planned (with Vallejo flat clear diluted with distilled water).

Only other issue was the roundels on the fuselage intakes. Those kit decals did not behave at all well around the curved/irregular surfaces, so I had to cut the front 4/5ths of each at the intake vane line and use tape to remove the front 4/5ths. Then replaced with some aftermarket roundels from Aussie Decals which were a bit old and fragile, and the white somewhat see-thru, but the bedded down better than the originals (this time I used Micro Sol/Set rather than neat Future, though neat Future worked fine for the dozens of other decals on this little kit - it has a lot of decals!)

Next the scary bit - removing the canopy masking & praying!

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Finished.

Had to make some mods to the rear & wing undercarriage mounting points to make the wheels touch the ground, as my mods to the front wheel well to hide the gap meant the front wheel assembly was about 1mm longer than it should be :wacko:

I think I have a new favourite jet now (used to be the Sabre, but the Harrier is a really cool looking a/c).

A few pics snapped with my Samsung phone camera - seems to do a better job than my little Lumix camera?

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